Champagning at the bit

To ensure we arrived in Mareuil-sur-Ay for our e-Bike tour of the Champagne area in plenty of time we had booked an Uber, which gave us piece of mind. We had booked it for 8.30am and were downstairs by 8.20am. But, at 8.31am the booking was cancelled - not happy Jan! FYU!

We headed to nearby Épernay station to try and secure a taxi - Ian called a local company to book a taxi and we were on our way about 15 minutes later (Ed - much to everybody’s surprise it arrived!). We arrived at our meeting spot 30 minutes early, so went for a bit of a wander around the area.

We met the rest of the group at Le Clos Corbier - a bed and breakfast and tasting venue - where we had a coffee, met Harry the office dog and waited to have our briefing on how to operate the eBikes. We then headed off but had to quickly return to base as one of the bikes had 3 broken spokes.

Finally, we were off and pedalling, making our way through the picturesque town of Mareuil-sur-Ay, passing a number of Champagne houses - Bollinger, Taitinger, Billecart-Salmon, Piper Heidsieck, Philipponnat, Roederer and Clos des Goisses.

We then headed out of the village into the picturesque vineyards, making our way to the town of Hautvillers for a cellar tour with the fourth generation winemaker Benoit (spunk, Ed - Quel mec?) from the family run Champagne House of Fernand Lemaire. The village was located fairly high up in the hills, and was very picturesque. This was followed by a tasting of three of their fabulous champagnes, including a Brut (2017), a Rosé and a Brut vintage 2012. All of these champagnes were stellar.

After our tasting, we visited the Abby of St Peter, where Dom Perignon, supposedly the creator of champagne, worked as the cellar master and is now buried. Good story, but not really true. He did develop elements of the wine making process and made important contributions to the production and quality of champagne wine when the region’s wines were predominantly red, and is considered the “spiritual father” of champagne. It’s just that the sparkling champagne we know today was not created until about 200 years after he died. The DP myth seems to have been largely created by Scotty from marketing.

After a brief stop at a scenic lookout affording great views of the champagne region, we started our decent into the valley through beautiful vineyards heading back towards Le Clos Corbier, following a path along the Marne river. On arrival back we were treated to a delicious lunch with copious amounts of champagne and and the aptly named Bouzey Rouge, pinot noir.Les mer