We took an early train ride out of Paris today to the city of Reims, known for the famous bubbly, CHAMPAGNE. It took less then an hour to get to this beautiful French city, but it felt worlds away from the hustle and bustle of Paris.
We began the day exploring the city. The Norte Dame of Reims has a long history of French kings being coronated there. It was built in 800 but sadly was destroyed during WWI, as was 70% of the city’s buildings. It took many years to restore the church to it’s original glory, and the mayor at the time told the people that they can build the other buildings any style they wish. Now the town has a mixture of old and new which add to the charm of Reims.
That’s dad standing on the right. We called this the Game of Thrones room and fireplace
After touring the church and the abbey and palace treasures next door we began our walk to the Tattinger champagne house. We decided to eat along the way. Unfortunately for us there were more hair salons then there were restaurants. So we picked up a few things from a small bakery to tide us over till after the tour and sat at a park bench.
After we ate it was time for our cave tour. We learned the history abboit how the grape used for the chapmpagne in their whole region was brought over in the 1400’s and monks at the abbey began making it and storing them while they fermented in the chalk caves underneath the city. That process is still being used today and Tattinger has the largest caves in the region. The also have hundreds of acres of grapes growing outside the city. The caves were six stories underground and have eight miles of passages. Theses were the original ones from the abbey that the monks used 600 years ago. They also store several millions of bottles at a time and they stay down there to ferment from 3-10 years dependent on the type. It was fascinating and chilly but amazing to see.
After our tour we sampled some of their varieties of champagne and then went on our merry way back to the city center (via bus this time). We enjoyed some lunch along with hundreds of locals and tourists. It was like we were at Irvine Spectrum just everyone spoke French.
We made our way to the train station and took the train back to, Paris. It was a beautiful day exploring and gaining a new perspective of champagne.
