Day 3

Early breakfast to get to the Tourist information for 8.45pm for "Bubbles Tours".The company, not unsurprisingly, wanted to call the business champagne tours but the authorities who are fiercely protective of the name champagne did not allow them to use the word "champagne". Personally I think Bubbles Tours is an excellent description. Our guide Amanda was extremely informative and enthusiastic as we drove around Reims, often with no hands on the steering wheel, to illustrate a particular point.

We arrived at Mumm Champagne House and had our first tour of the day. The guide was very soft spoken and some of the party had difficulty hearing his commentary. The initial introduction to Mumm was a set of pictures illustrating the champagne process which I found much classier than the Moet extravaganza. The tour was informative and Mumm had displayed many visual aids to show the development of the champagne process. By 10.30 we had our first glass of champagne in our hand - a choice of brut or demi sec. I chose the demi-sec and found it agreeable at that time of the morning. The obligatory shop stop followed but again they were happy for you to wander about with your glass in hand unlike Moet where they were rushing people through.

Our next stop was the Reims Cathedral. I said to the girls that I was "cathedraled" out after a recent visit to Lucca and Ely (where the cathedral is amazing! I would highly recommend it. The best interior of a cathedral ever.) When I saw the cathedral I was bowled over by the size and the decoration. It is bigger than Notre Dame in Paris. The novel "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Collett, recommended by my cycling buddy has brought the whole building process of churches to life for me and I was excited to find lots of flying buttresses in Reims. I had not realised that most of the French kings had been crowned in Reims starting with Clovis. The stained glass windows in one area of the cathedral had been commissioned by the champagne houses and show the champagne producing process.
The exhibition of the restoration of the cathedral after the world wars clearly showed the devastation and German visitors to Reims would be constantly reminded of the wars and their consequences.

We then drove out into the country to visit the Co-operative .The harvesting had started and grapes were arriving and being weighed, then thrown into the enormous vats. We saw the juice pouring out of the presses and tasted the first pressing. The second and third are used for other wines but not champagne.
We saw all the riddling machines and how the whole process is now very mechanised. There were a few oak barrels about but generally the metal containers are used for the fermentations process.