Département de la Marne

Today we had a busy schedule. In the morning we toured the Moët Chandon Champagne House, which is the largest House in Epernay. It was established in 1743 by Claude Moët. The company was renamed Moët et Chandon in 1833 after Pierre-Gabriel Chandon de Brailles became Remy Moët’s son-in-law and joined the company as a partner of Jean-Remy Moët, Claude Moët’s grandson. They did not start producing champagne until 1840 and introduced their first vintage in 1842.

Initially their champagnes were very sweet and were drunk for dessert, but they started to produce dryer ‘brut’ wines to appeal to English tastes. The Poms wanted to drink their champagne with their meal! It is one thing the French now thank them for. Their best selling brand , Brut Imperial, was introduced in the 1860’s. Their best known label, Dom Perignon, is named for the Benedictine monk, who is remembered in legend as the “Father of Champagne”.

Moët & Chandon merged with Hennessy Cognac in 1971 and with Louis Vuitton in the late 1980’s to become LVMH (Louis-Vuitton-Moët-Hennessy), the largest luxury group in the world. Moët & Chandon produces 28 million bottles of plonk annually!

There are cellars that we toured are 15 metres down, but there also cellars 30 metres below ground and they have kilometres of tunnels! The tour was very informative and fun and at the end the sommelier Brian explained the process of how the Imperial Brut is made, before we all said “chin chin” and drained our glass. We had a chat to a friendly group of Americans who were on a day trip from Paris while we were quaffing our champas.Les mer