From Chalons-en-Champagne to Epernay: Muddy Champagne

June 18, 2008

We are slow getting off this morning. We dawdle at the excellent hotel breakfast and I take advantage of our Internet connection to send a few e-mails.

It again seems that to follow the canal is the obvious route if we want to avoid traffic and our map indicates a path, not a road, exists. What we find looks pretty good at the beginning but deteriorates after a few kilometers and becomes impassable. We can no longer get around the giant mud holes. This is worse than Cambodia.

We are about to turn back when I tell Janos, wait, I want to see what's on the other side of this embankment. I am delighted to discover another path, and it's paved. Our joint efforts manage to hoist the loaded bikes over the embankment and through the brambles. Now we are in heaven, relatively speaking. The surface is spotty, but very ridable.

Good news, there's a sealed path on the other side

Janos has to go back and look for his missing camera case (which he finds). In the meantime I play with my camera.

At noon we cycle into a village, find an open bakery and get supplies for our lunch under the roof of an old market hall. As we continue we again have pretty canal-and-locks scenery until the tow path stops. Then we proceed on country roads.

We're back on country roads, wine hills in the distance

Now we see our first vineyards. While the term "champagne" is used by some makers of sparkling wine in other parts of the world, in France and in numerous other countries the use of the term is limited to only those wines that come from here.

Endless vineyards: we are now entering that part of the Marne Valley known for its high quality champagnes

Epernay, where we stay the night, is a center for some of the most well-known wine cellars. We hasten to find a room, change our clothes and cycle to the house of Moët & Chandon for a guided tour of their immense wine cellars. This is the address of one of the world's largest and most prominent champagne houses in the world.

Chateau of another champagne producer in Epernay

The cellars are indeed impressive, there are 28 km of underground passageways, and as we stroll past thousands and thousands of bottles our guide tells us about the interesting process of producing chamgagne, quite different from that of an ordinary wine. We see the big bottles and little bottles, cru and vintage, learn how the sediment is removed and at the end of the tour get to taste the final product.

Champagne is mostly fermented in two sizes of bottles, standard bottles (750 ml), and magnums (1.5 l). Other bottle sizes (not all shown here), named for Biblical kings, are Balthazar (12 litres), Salmanazar (9 litres), Methuselah (6 litres), Jeroboam (3 litres)

It is the end of June and the days are long. We still have daylight to ride around town and take pictures.

An interesting little castle on the street corner

Same time, same fountain, viewed from a few steps to the left

Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 871 km (541 miles)

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