Champagne visit Tat, VC, Mumm, and a few others.

[TheEngineer]

Sorry for the delay in getting down to business and typing out these notes. I'll fill in a few trip details as well so that there will be some context.

I took a red eye flight out of Boston on Friday night a few weeks ago (the 15th actually) as did three of my other friends and one flew out from CA. We were all landing in different places but converging on the town of Reims. I arrived first and found both my hotel and rental car place immediately across from the train station at Reims. So I dropped off my stuff and went to pick up my european rental....it was a chevy! All the way across the pond, hoping to pick up some european metal and I get a chevy....oh well. At least it was a diesel. (Recall I use to work for GM)

I drove around a little and pulled out the GPS that my friends gave me only to find that they had left all settings in Mandarin...which would be useful if I actually spoke mandarin. !$!@$#!#.......... After an hour of fighting it, I figured out how to get it all back to english.

First place I went was Tattinger. I must have been quite the site, no shaving after landing, just travelled a whole day on trains and planes and automobiles. I took the english tour and went down into the caves first, alone without any of my friends. Nice! The tattinger that was the sample was the regular bottling. Interesting in that it tasted very fresh and lighter than I recall from the US. I attributed that to other things until I though to ask the tour guide if they have different dosages for different countries. She quietly confirmed this and said that the US usually gets the highest dosages, after Asia. Hmmm....I guess I should expect different experiences in each country. In lower doaage form, the champagne was much brighter, crisper and cleaner, very elegant. which do I prefer? Not sure but probably lower dosage since these champagnes are not meant to be aged. For aged Champagnes, I'm not sure I want lower dosage.

I went back to the train station and picked up my friends. We had a bit of time so we drove to Epernay for a quick look. Cute little town. Back to Reims, I dropped them off at VC for a tour while I went to pick up another friend who was arriving at a different trains station as he was coming in from Belgium. He train was late but I RACED back and just barely made the tour before they went into the caves. The caves at VC are much bigger. very impressive. After the tour, we were lead to a barracaded area where there was nice leather furniture and 20 foot high glass ceilings. The rest of the tour was outside having a regular VC. A person then walked into our room with a bottle of the 2002 Vintage and the 1998 La Grande Dame. We were having a private tasting! This was great. Apparently since I had made my reservation through the Chef de Cave (whom I met before), we were getting the rock start treatment! The 2002 was fresher than the ones from my memory. much less toast but more elegant again. Suepr clean but with a good density. The 1998 La Grande Dame, a champagne that I've had on many occasions now, tasted nothing like any of the ones I've had. this thing was straight from the caves downstairs and like the other champagnes, was simply fresher and more vibrant than any I've had. Less nose of briocche, less toast, less mushroomy, less development overall but super fresh and very powerful a pinot based champagne. I noted this to the person serving us and she said that all Champagne bottles are different but in general he agreed with me.

We got to finish off the rest of the 2002 and the LGD in that beautiful room. What a great way to start the trip.

We dragged ourselves out of the space as we had another appointment at Mumms. Mumms also gave a good tour of the facilities and caves before the tasting. the tasting room was not as nice as the others but we got to try the vintage champagnes as well. It's hard to follow LGD so I did not take notes. Suffice to say, it was not up to LDG level but it was serviceable.

We had dinner in the restaurant street of Reims and had a bottle of the Chapoutier st. Josephs.

The next day, we went to Epernay first and visited Moet & Chandon. Probably the best looking guide we had ever met show us around the facilities and then the tasting. The 2002 vintage white and rose were servced. I agree with many that these are probably the most underrated vintage wines around. For the price, they are worth a look. For not much more than a regular NV, these are wonderfully made wines. Perhaps they lack a bit in personality but they are well made.

We raced back to visit Pommery but missed our appointment. So we took an early trip through the Champagne road. Stopped at the cooperative Mailly and tried their champagnes. Pretty good, interesting at least if not entirely polished. I bought my first bottle of wine here.

WE took the LONG (lost) way to Dijon (a 3 hour drive took us almost 7.......). Tomorrow we start Burgundy.

I wanted to add here that as we had a lot of time on the road, we had visited a few gas stations, one of which we ate at. Not a bad place, an autogrill I think where they had hot fod servied cafeteria style (but looked nicer). there was this sausage that I saw and I asked what it was. I was assured that it was a regional speciality and that I would love it. It was called Andouille. For those of you that know, it is made with pig small intestine adn stomach. Let's jsut say that there is a certain aroma about things like these. While I had not issues eating it, my friends only saw their caloric intake reduced a bit more as they left some of it behind on the plate. in the battle of hunger versus aroma, the aroma had a slight lead in this case.