Champagne: How Champagne is made and the best champagne tours in Reims and Epernay

Musée de la Reddition and the Cathedral aside, this is really why people come to Reims. Champagne. Reims and Epernay, a small city about a twenty minute train ride away, are the capitals of bubbly.

Most people know how wine is made—the fermentation of grapes so that the sugar turns into alcohol. But how is Champagne made? It’s a wine, yes, but how does it end up carbonated? The short answer is with a lot of work.

Here’s the long version.

According to AOC regulations, only three grapes can be used to make champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. Of these three grapes, the two Pinots are red-skinned grapes with white juice, whereas Chardonnay is a white-skinned grape with white juice.

Most champagne houses either own land or hold contracts in multiple appellations (different areas with different soil, amount of rain and sun exposure, resulting in a slightly different harvest with thus a slightly different flavor to the wine produced.) When the harvest comes, these grapes are picked and pressed as quickly as possible, so that the red-tinted skin from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier doesn’t have a change to “stain” the juice.

The juice is then shipped to the champagne house where it undergoes the first fermentation and turns into wine. At this point, the wine is still separated by appellation and by varietal (type of grape.) At this point, the cellarmaster tastes the various wines. Based on the quality of the produced wine, he’ll decide to make a millesimé (a vintage) or regular champagne.

He’ll choose various wines and blend them together to produce the champagne of that year that closely approximates the house style. (For example, Mumm champagne is said to be refined and creamy whereas Charles Cazanove is said to be fruitier.) If he is making a regular wine, this could also include wines from prior harvests—called reserve wine. For a millesimé, the cellarmaster has decided that this year’s harvest was exceptional enough that he will only use this year’s harvest. Thus, vintage champagne will carry the year of the harvest on the bottle.

The wine will be bottled along with a little extra sugar and yeast. It is then left to age in the cave for at least fifteen months for non-vintage champagne and at least three years for vintage champagne. Some champagne houses, especially the big ones, will age much longer than this. During this time, the wine undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle. Since the bottle is capped, there is no way for the carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of the reaction to escape. Thus, it dissolves into the wine instead. The “bubbles” in champagne are the carbon dioxide coming out of solution upon the release of pressure and exposure to air.

This, however, leaves the wine maker with a problem. There is dead yeast in his bottle of wine--- and that’s pretty gross. Seriously, would you drink a bottle of champagne with that stuck to the side?

So, the champagne is then “riddled.” Originally done by hand and now done by machine, riddling means that a bottle of champagne is slowly turned from side to side and moved from a horizontal position to a vertical. This loosens the yeast from the side of the bottle and then it slides down into the neck. Before machinery, there was a person who then turned the bottle back upright and opened it, allowing the pressure to force the dead yeast out. However, this took a very long time and resulted in the loss of some champagne. Today, the very tip of the bottle is dipped in a chilling solution, causing the yeast (and a little bit of champagne) to freeze. When the bottle is opened, only the ice cube pops out. No mess!

Finally, before we put the cork in and send our champagne off to be sold, there is one final step. A small amount of still wine and sugar is added, called the liquor of dosage. This determines what type of champagne it is: extra brut (no sugar added), brut (6-10 grams added, replicating the amount of sugar in the grapes), sec (sweeter) and demi-sec (sweetest).

You will learn all of this if you go on one of the many champagne house tours. Mumm, Tattinger, Moet et Chandon, Veuve Cliquot, Dom Perignon, Pommery, etc--- they all have houses in either Reims or Epernay. Some require calling in advance and do much smaller groups (Mumm, Veuve, Ruinart) while others you can probably call the day of and still get in (Castellane, Charles Cazanove.) Essentially, the best way to guess? If you’ve heard of the champagne, you should call in advance.

However, this is not to say that the best tours are necessarily the ones where you call in advance. Or that the best tours are done by the houses that produce the best champagne. I went on three champagne tours: Mumm, Charles Cazanove and Castellane.

My recommendation overall is Castellane. Although it’s located in Epernay instead of Reims, I think it’s definitely worth the trip. (For those of you who don’t want to go to Epernay, Mumm gives a very complete, elegant and interesting tour.) At Castellane, actually see the factory where the champagne is paid, including the riddling machine, the labeling machine and the freezing vats. The guides (or at least mine) are also fantastic—they seem to know everything and don’t mind answering questions.

Their museum is also excellent, showing you the machines they used in prior centuries as well as a whole range of old bottle and advertisement designs. Plus, you can climb up the Castellane tower.

While it is an awful lot of stairs to get up that high, you get a wonderful view.

The tour is 8.50 and you get one glass of champagne at the end, with the possibility of buying other tastings. Additionally, it’s not one of the most well-known houses, so you can really just show up and there will be tour openings. Though, one thing to pay attention to: Castellane is not on the Avenue de Champagne like all the other houses. It’s on a little road just off to one side, but if you take the Avenue de Champagne and keep walking, you’ll eventually see the tower.

Sites in Reims

Reims is a small city, but in physical appearance, it looks a lot like Paris—broad avenues, Haussman-style buildings in white stone, et cetera. It’s an elegant, if someone austere city. You could kill some time walking the Avenue de Vesle (a pedestrian street between the Hotel de Ville and the river) and looking at the shops, but if you’ve been to Paris (or even to Bordeaux), it will look very familiar and very French.

I stayed in Reims for three days, which I have to say was probably a mistake. There is, quite simply, not that much to do here besides drink champagne--- and doing multiple champagne tours gets expensive and repetitive. (Plus the “It’s 11 a.m. and I’ve had three glasses of champagne on an empty stomach” is only fun once.) However, that is not to say that there aren’t some neat things to see!

Musée de la Reddition (Museum of the Surrender): Before anyone starts snickering about France having a surrender museum, let me point out that this is a museum about the German surrender to the Allied Powers during the Second World War. (Yes, I know. There’s still a French joke to be made there.)

Located in an annex of the Roosevelt High School near the train station, the Musée de la Reddition is actually really interesting. In 1945, this high school was the headquarters for the Allied Forces in France as they continued to push the Germans back out of France. It was also where, at 2:41 a.m. on May 7^th, General Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German High Command, signed the document of unconditional surrender of all German forces. This was later eclipsed by the much grander signing done in Berlin at Stalin’s request a day later, but it was actually here that the Western front came to an end.

The museum is small, with the “Room of the Surrender” as its main attraction. It’s been preserved entirely as it was, including the maps covering the walls that the Allied generals used to plan their strategy. For me, that was the most fascinating part. Often, history tells you a narrative without really allowing you to see it. It lacks immediacy.

Being able to look at the map and see the assignment of each air force division, the supplies that were being sent to each and potential targets is fascinating. There’s a map showing the supply depots scattered throughout France and another one showing troop movements. As for the actual moment of surrender, well, there’s a table in the room. That’s’ the table they sat at. Each chair is labeled with the name of the person who was sitting there. It’s only interesting because Eisenhower, despite being present in the building, was not present in the surrender negotiations, because there was no one of equivalent rank to represent the German side.

The rest of the museum has vintage uniforms, some weapons and scrap metal from airplanes, as well as a small collection of newspapers from May 8^th, announcing the surrender. The newspapers once again gave that sense of immediacy—this is how people actually lived World War II.

Overall, for three euros (which is actually a Reims Museum Pass, so it gets into the Fine Art Museum as well as a few other places), the Musée de la Reddition is definitely worth going to.

Cathedrale de Reims

It’s almost hidden behind the Hotel de Ville, but when you come around onto the Parvis, the square just in front, it’s as impressive as every cathedral. Plus, the Reims cathedral has played a very special role in French history for quite a while. The coronation of the Kings of France took place here. (Also, the presence of the champagne bottle sign in the bottom left of this picture amuses me to no end.)

Inside, the Cathedral is surprisingly quiet for a tourist attraction (which is a good thing. See my post “Candles” for my reaction to people being obnoxious in old churches) and very airy. Scattered around the walkway are signs describing the procedure of the coronation (which has twelve steps) and outlining various architectural features, including the “Champagne window.” The bubbly industry boomed even in the Renaissance, apparently, and the manufacturers of champagne showed their gratitude to the grape by installing a stained glass window showing how champagne was made.

Besides that, the two other main attractions of the Reims Cathedral are the “Smiling Angel,” a statue in the leftmost entryway that was taken to epitomize the will of Reims to recover after the destruction of World War II. At this point, however, weather and pollution have taken a serious toll on the smile and it’s starting to fade away.

(for those of you who watch Doctor Who, are you having trouble looking away? Because I am. Remember, anything that carries the image of an angel becomes an angel. (: )

There is also a set of stained glass windows by Marc Chagal. They are very blue and very abstract, and thus didn’t show up particularly well when I tried to take a picture. I’m sure it would have been easier if I had used flash, but being that I was inside the Cathedral, I wasn’t going to disturb everyone (including the people praying just one chapel over) by doing so.

There are other things to see in Reims: the Foujita Chapel, the Basilica Saint-Remy and the Museum of Fine Arts. The Basilica was a hell of a walk, so I didn’t end up going. I did go to the Museum of Fine Arts and…

Let me tell you about the Museum of Fine Arts. Every French city has one. You will start by looking at tattered medieval tapestries and crude wooden crosses, then work your way through the Renaissance and the Baroque period, then the Neoclassical. Gustave Courbet will be inevitably be there—the man must have made a painting a day. There will be still lifes. Then you will move on to Impressionism. There will be fuzzy lilies and the obligatory pointillist painting. Then you will go back downstairs through the modern art exhibit and you will understand nothing. Then you will leave, with a headache.

I have a limited tolerance for art museums. There need to be pieces I recognize or a guide to show things to me, because art is not something I have studied a lot. I don't "get" it in the same way I do literature. I don't know why painting deserves to be a museum and another doesn't besides "Well, that's one's pretty," and my artistic vocabulary stops somewhere between chiaroscuro and foreground. Apologies to my art major friends and roommates-- you tried!

Visiting Reims

This section is much more for someone who might actually be traveling to Reims. There are a few things that I learned during the three days that I was there that might be useful to pass on.

Getting to Reims: There’s a TGV that goes from Paris that only takes 45 minutes—really useful if you’re based out of Paris, for instance. However, there is a possibility that in taking the train either into or out of Reims, that the SNCF website will route you through TGV Champagne-Ardenne. It’s a TGV only train station that’s only eight kilometers outside of Reims. From there, there are two ways into the city proper. Firstly, there is usually a smaller train goes back and forth to meet arriving and departing trains, thus if you’re heading to Strasbourg (like I was) at 11:15, there is likely going to be a shuttle train leaving at 11:00 to take you to the TGV station and to take the disembarking passengers back to Reims. If this is not the case for one reason or the other, the tram line B comes out to the TGV station. You can buy a one-way ticket (1.60 euros) and take the tram into Reims instead.

Public transport: The tram system in Reims is very useful, going from the train station (in Reims as well as the TGV Champagne-Ardennes) down past the Hotel de Ville and the Cathedral, along the main thoroughfare and across the river. I used it a couple of times. Tickets cost 1.60 for a one-way ticket. However, if you keep your old ticket, you can “recharge” at a ticket machine, adding another one-way trip for only 1.30. It saves you thirty centimes and it’s also better for the environment.

However, the trams don’t run that often at night. After nine o’clock or so, you’re better off walking. Reims is a very small city, and you’re likely to be able to get wherever you’re going on foot faster than waiting for the tram, which may come only once every twenty to thirty minutes.