One sunny Saturday morning, 7 crazy fools in 3 separate cars decided to awake at the crack of summer’s dawn in order to traverse across the English Channel. It was all for a very noble cause – on search of champagne. Despite the Herculean task ahead of them (i.e. waking up at 4.30am on a weekend), all were in good spirits.
The trek down to the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone took just over an hour. Of course, Yung, our resident London Black Cab driver somehow managed to find a shortcut (on an expressway, no less!) to make it there about 15 minutes ahead of everyone. No doubt, the enthusiasm of testing out Arctic, his new MX5 added at least 10 miles per hour to his average road speed! After checking in, we all converged at Burger King before boarding the train, where early morning bacon butties and hash browns provided needed nourishment for the likely arduous (and tipsy!) journey ahead.
The Fellowship getting Burger King fuel before leaving the UK
Like on all trips, everything didn’t go exactly to plan. Although our cars were all supposed to be on the same train (and even expected to be behind each other on the same carriage), things worked out such that Lana, our trusty Vauxhall Astra, ended up on a train that left 15 minutes before everyone else. The train journey itself was pretty uneventful – the most exciting thing that happened was this photo taken by Nik, which made the train compartment look like a piece of 24th century technology from Star Trek.
After pulling up at the Total petrol station, where I fitted the requisite “beam benders” to our headlights, we linked up with the rest of our convoy and set off on our French motorway safari! For Jini & Yung (in Arctic, their new MX5) and Sandra & Cindy (in Hansum, Sandra’s new Audi A4 convertible), the French motorways and its correspondingly higher speed limits provided a fantastic respite from cluttered London roads. Needless, to say, the tops on their cars soon came down and with Jini fastening an Audrey Hepburn type scarf around her head (and blowing kisses into the wind), they were off leading the way. Nik, Karen and myself (sans scarf) admirably managed to keep up in our support car, which simply was not meant to traverse motorways at speeds greater than 100mph!
Our travelling companions in the distance...
In our car, we passed the time by giving Karen - who amazingly does not listen to music, a bit of a musical education. As she was heading to the Hard Rock Calling concert this Saturday (which Nik and I had to pull out of *sob*), we thought she would benefit by familiarising herself with John Mayer classics like Your Body is a Wonderland and Why Georgia. However, while in France, one surely must listen to something French, non? Out came Pink Martini’s Symphatique, and we were humming and bopping away as the endless French fields rolled by…
Our first major port of call was Epernay, where the famous Moet & Chandon champagne originates. But before any indulgence in sparkling grape juice could begin, we needed to fill our stomachs with some fine French food. We stopped off at a local French restaurant chosen by Jini (thank God for her immaculate and detailed research), where our 2-day food and drink indulgence really kicked off!
Yung and Jini at our first French food pit-stop
Karen, who speaks 5 languages, made the rest of us look on in awe as she expertly discussed the food with our waitress in perfect French. It was a good thing too, otherwise we may very well have ended up eating cows testicles instead of foie gras and steak. It was without doubt a wonderful first meal of the trip – I had a mixed fish cake to start, which was followed by the most amazingly tender beef strips with boulangere potatoes. Who cares whether the cows are mad in France when the meat is so tender!
Dessert!
With our distended stomachs, we then took a slow stroll over to the Moet & Chandon Champagne house. The cellars were simply amazing. I personally found it incredible that 300 years ago, people actually bothered to carve out an underground cellar for the sole purpose of keeping alcohol. Glad to know that they got their priorities right! But apparently, Monsieur Moet was a close personal friend of Napoleon Bonaparte - no doubt because Moet provided an endless supply of booze, so I guess all the effort must have been worth it.
Hmmm, are we at the right place?
How would we live without the talents of Monsieur Perignon?!
Yung and I waiting with anticipation...
Blue skies at the M&C chateau
The tour of the cellars was great fun. Yung and I decided that the tour guide was getting off too easy as no one was testing her knowledge of the champagne making process. Despite our many probing questions that delved into physics and chemistry, the lady held up incredibly well, and even managed good comic timing in her answers. Between our questions and our stupid wisecrack alcoholic jokes, she probably hated us by the end of it!
Waiting at the entrance of the cellars...
Despite our messing around, I did find the tour very educational. The grapes are picked by hand each year (as machine picking may damage the produce), with the grapes from each specific vineyard kept separate from its other counterparts. Once this arduous task is completed, the grapes are pressed (by machine, not by feet!) and left to create wine. The wine from each of the different types of grape is then combined to create a unique blend that “holds true to the values of Moet & Chandon” (the quoted bits were taken verbatim from the silly corporate video that the guide made us watch – Yech!). After the wine has been created, yeast is added, which then causes the mixture to effervesce, creating the bubbles that we get in champagne. Somehow, the stuff tasted better after learning that each bottle of champers takes years of manual commitment to make.
A half-marathon worth of bottles!
Yung's alcohol alotment for the night...
Does the moss make the champers taste better?
Looks like something out of Area 51...
Upon the conclusion of the tour, we were whisked into a reception area where we were laden with champagne. This was the part that everyone was eagerly looking forward to (sans moi, since I don’t drink). After a few glasses of bubbly (with Jini downing her last 2 flutes), Nik started saying “semi-dec” instead of “demi-sec”. I also seem to remember Jini slurring that she wanted to sit on her car, as opposed to in it! It wasn’t surprising that we were the last ones to leave the drinking room - Nik had to be physically pried away from her large bottle!
Slightly sloshed...
More sloshed...
No! Dont leave me...
Jini, having gotten pretty wasted on the bubbly, was kicked out of her new MX5 by Yung (no doubt, to guard against the risk that she might puke in the car) and dumped in the backseat of our car. She was out like a light shortly after we pulled out of the carpark – clearly nothing was going to wake her up after all the champers (and it was barely even 4pm in the afternoon!)
We pulled into our hotel in Reims (the capital of the Champagne region), where a nice cold shower and a short nap became the priority before dinner, which was expected to be another spectacular experience!
(To be continued)
