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How do you distil the French experience into a tight schedule? Cut to the chase with a visit to Champagne and a weekend in ParisWords Sally Feldman PhotograPhy Nicky Ryan

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We only ever drink Champagne, although I might perhaps take a glass of Sauternes with dessert,” Valérie, our taxi driver, informs us nonchalantly, as

we wend our way through the wintry landscape. She’s a native Champenoise – from Epernay – so she should know. Perhaps that’s why everyone we’ve met during our brief trip to this most famous of French wine regions has been so convivial, because it’s hard to imagine why else they would be, judging by this bone-chilling morning. It’s early spring and the hillsides of bare vines are poetically bleak, and Valérie assures us how difficult it was at first to cultivate anything in this chalky, stone-laden soil.

Sampling those luscious, palate-tickling bubbles, it seems impossible that something so enshrined in the idea of luxury, of celebration, of joie de vivre, could have had its birth here. Ironic, too, perhaps, that the man deemed to have created this most

flirtatious of drops, Dom Pérignon of l’Abbaye Hautvillers, was a prayin’ man – but the church has always been the traditional dominion of the grape.

And it certainly feels as though we’re in a cathedral of sorts, tens of metres below ground in the cellars at the Pol Roger Champagne house based in Epernay. Our host, the urbane Christian Pol Roger, is carefully uncorking a dusty bottle of 1914. “I want to open this here, so it has never left its birthplace,” he explains.

The Champagne is extraordinary – a deep amber, with no more than a fleeting memory

of its original effervescence. The flavour is reminiscent of a rich dessert wine, and we toast the men who made it, musing for a moment on the devastation they would have witnessed on battlefields not so far from here.

It was the Romans who first popped the cork on the region. They came, they saw, they carved it up – to extract the limestone for their inexorable empire building. And they left behind kilometres of cavernous tunnels – known in Epernay as caves, in Reims as crayères – which are perfectly intact still, and perfect for fermenting and ageing Champagne, given their constant temperature and humidity. It’s about 10°C down there, and the curved walls are slick with moisture. The air is pungent with grapey, musty aromas. The atmosphere is hushed and the lights dim, barely reflected off the bottles. Millions of them, at various stages of maturity, line the maze of chalky tunnels snaking below the cities of Epernay and Reims. Many are still turned by hand in their wooden racks, ingeniously angled

to allow the sediment to rise to the top of each bottle for removal – a device invented in 1816 by Madame Clicquot, one of a number of formidable-looking matriarchs who have dominated Champagne’s venerable history.

Above ground, behind Bollinger’s 19th-century mansion in the village of Aÿ, we walk among pinot noir vines that are more than 200 years old – pre-phylloxera, the disease that virtually wiped out the wine industry across Europe in the late 1800s. Two meagre stone-walled plots (clos) of these vines remain here – Clos Chaudes Terres and Clos St-Jacques – in which the vines are planted in the traditional manner, en foule (in a crowd). It’s a misleading phrase, as there are far fewer vines to each row than in modern plantings.

FRANCe File

ChAmpAgNe

Where to stay Château

d’Etoges, 4 rue Richebourg,

Etoges, +33 3 26 59 30 08,

etoges.com. There are 20

rooms in this 12th-century

castle. An hour’s drive from

Reims; 40 minutes from

Epernay. From $202 per

double plus breakfast.

Royal Champagne,

Bellevue, Champillon,

+33 3 26 52 87 11,

royalchampagne.com.

Once a favoured pit-stop

of Napoleon, this 25-room

Relais & Châteaux hotel

has a one-Michelin-starred

restaurant. Views over

the vineyards stretch to

Hautvillers. From $330 per

double plus breakfast.

Château Les Crayères,

64 blvd Henri Vasnier,

Reims, +33 3 26 82 80 80,

lescrayeres.com. An

award-winning 20-room

Relais & Châteaux hotel’s

beautiful garden has

views to Reims cathedral.

From $473 per double

plus breakfast.

Le Mongeardière, 1 rue

Emmanuel Lemaitre, Aÿ,

+33 3 26 55 22 19,

lamongeardiere.fr.st.

B&B with seven rooms set

around a sunny courtyard.

It’s all very shabby-chic,

and cute as a button.

From $80 per double

including breakfast.

Where to eat and drink

L’Apostrophe, 59 place

Drouet D’erlon, Reims, +33

3 26 79 19 89, restaurant-

apostrophe.com. A lively

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PREVIOUS PAGES The cellars of Louis Roederer in Reims, lined with bottles of

Cristal. THIS PAGE Champagne Bollinger’s headquarters in Aÿ. OPPOSITE, fROm lEfT

A dining room at the Trianon, Moët & Chandon’s mansion in Epernay; the

high-tech bottling plant at Louis Roederer.

In fact, the ground is crowded out by new shoots re-buried into the soil after grape harvest.

Bollinger is one of only three Champagne houses (the others are Krug and Alfred Gratien) that still use small oak barrels for fermentation. Its cooper’s workshop, presided over by Denis St Arromant, the only cooper left in the region, is a veritable still-life of ancient-looking hand-crafted tools.

Walking between the two clos, we are diverted back into the 21st century by the titillating vision of a recycling truck bristling with empties – Champagne bottles, every last one. Among them, the unmistakable clear glass of Cristal, Louis Roederer’s renowned Champagne, designed to assuage Tsar Alexander II’s tantrum over his bottles of bubbly looking no different from those on his courtiers’ tables. The house of Roederer immediately commissioned a Flemish glassmaker to create, um, revolutionary flat-bottomed crystal bottles, furnished with his coat of arms.

You could easily spend all your time in Champagne underground. Don’t miss Veuve Clicquot’s snappy, state-of-the-art enterprise in Epernay, and its massive, bulbous crayères that taper to little bottlenecks as they rise to ground level. This is, perhaps, the most ‘commercial’ of the Champagne-house experiences, but none the worse for it. Indeed, all the houses are disarmingly distinct in their presentation, their ambience,

their culture. Most of the larger ones offer tours of some kind, generally by appointment only, so it is wise to enquire beforehand. Many of the smaller Champagne houses also welcome visitors; though, again, check first, particularly at lunchtime...

If you tire of cellars, come up for air in pretty villages such as Hautvillers, over which Dom Pérignon’s graceful abbey stands guard. Walk the abbey grounds and admire the views over the vineyards from its walled garden. Wander through Hautvillers and try to work out what the beautiful

wrought-iron house signs denote. Each represents the trade of the current or past house-dweller, and generally involves some part of the winemaking process. The well-turned-out little Hôtel de Ville (town hall) is a cracker – all pastel, primped and puffed up with civic pride.

Pack a picnic – in Reims, head straight to La Cave aux Fromages in the attractive place du Forum and load up with a selection, including

such local specialties as Chaource, Cendre de Champagne and Langres (with its concave top to hold a drop or two of Champagne). Then pop to a boulangerie – Zunic is a winner – for a baguette and a Reims specialty, pain d’epices (a kind of gingerbread) for dessert. Or pick up a box of the city’s other local (and lurid) sweet treats, roses de Reims, from Fossier, whose window is a riot of these pink iced biscuits. Then head for the hills – you may catch a glimpse of the deer that still roam the forests south of the city.

Or take your time over a long lunch or dinner. In Reims, you could go way upscale and book at the gorgeous three-Michelin-starred restaurant

two-level restaurant/bar

with an eclectic menu,

from escargots to great

tagine. Local wines feature

– try a 1999 Alexandre

Bonnet Rosé de Riceys,

made only in the three

villages of Les Riceys,

in the Aube district.

Bistrot Le 7, 13 rue des

Berceaux, Epernay, +33

3 26 55 28 84. The casual

partner to the more

upmarket Patrick Michelon

Les Berceaux in the same

building, +33 3 26 55 28 84,

lesberceaux.com.

Where to shop Fossier,

25 cours Jean-Baptiste

Langlet, + 33 3 26 47 59 84;

80 ave de Laon, +33 3 26

49 97 87, Reims, biscuits-

fossier.com.

La Cave aux Fromages,

12 place du Forum, Reims,

+33 3 26 47 83 05.

Zunic, 80 rue de Vesle,

Reims, +33 3 26 47 40 20.

Getting around A’Gil Taxi,

Epernay, +33 3 26 59 01 44.

If you’re planning multiple

tastings, hire yourself a

designated driver.

pARis

Where to stay Hôtel du

Petit Moulin, 29–31 rue

de Poitou, 75003,

+33 1 42 74 10 10, paris-

hotel-petitmoulin.com. The

facade of the old bakery is

heritage-listed, but inside,

designer Christian Lacroix

was given carte blanche.

The result is a quirky mix of

modernity and history – très

Marais. From $305 per

double plus breakfast.

RIGHT Signage at Royal Champagne hotel in Chatillon. fAR RIGHT In the Champêtre (‘Country’) guest room at Château d’Etoges.

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View from the Rouzaud (Louis

Roederer) mansion in Reims. lEfT Hunting trophy at Château

d’Etoges hotel.

at Château Les Crayères. If that’s pushing the Euro a little too far, loiter for an hour or so over a cocktail – or a glass of bubbly – in the hotel’s bar, whose gauzily draped bay windows open to stunning gardens with views to the cathedral. Bistrot Le 7 in Epernay serves up excellent mod-Franc food with a frisson of fusion. We sample our first glass of sparkle here – a fine 1996 Jacquesson Avize Grande Cru made just down the road in the sweetly named village of Dizy. It goes swimmingly with sea trout and a piquant sauce on a nest of tagliatelle.

Try and take at least an afternoon to soak up the sheer scale and gothic majesty of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims – where Clovis, the first king of France (and all others thereafter), was anointed in the fifth century. Despite the best efforts of fire, revolution and two world wars, and after many incarnations, this intricately carved edifice stands, battered but unbowed, a towering tribute to centuries of ingenuity, craftsmanship and cheap labour.

By this time next year the one-and-a-half-hour rail trip between Paris and Reims will be halved – the latest faster-than-a-speeding-bullet TGV Est Européen launches on 10 June 2007.

Hell, you could do a day-trip if you were really pushed for time. Many people working in the larger Champagne houses already commute from Paris on the slow train, but we’ve combined our tour of Champagne with a weekend in the capital – a heady brew.

We’re booked into our favourite quartier, the Marais. Formerly the city’s Jewish enclave, it is now a haven of the literary, arty, fashiony and gay. Its ethnic roots haven’t been elbowed aside entirely, mind you. Witness the queues on Sunday outside the tiny little Jewish baker, Moskovitch et Cie in rue des Rosiers, and the turnover of crunchy little felafels at King Falafel Palace and L’As du Fallafel a few doors down. L’As (‘the Ace’) is reputedly the best – but KFP is definitely an honourable runner-up. Pile in for a late lunch – shoulder to shoulder with three-generation family groups and nightclub-bleary couples – or just go window-shopping clutching a crammed felafel roll like everyone else does.

The allure of the Marais is not of the haute Champs Elysées mode. Its rickety medieval streets are a jumble of individualistic boutiques, louche bars and traditional brasseries, art

Pavillon de la Reine,

28 place des Vosges,

75003, +33 1 40 29 19 19,

pavillon-de-la-reine.com.

From $490 per double

including breakfast.

Where to eat and drink Au

Petit Fer à Cheval, 30 rue

Vieille du Temple, 75004,

+33 1 42 72 47 47. A cool,

atmospheric venue

overwhelmed by its huge

horse-shoe-shaped bar.

If you can’t squeeze in, sit

outside at a pavement

table and commune with

couples and their dogs.

Gamin de Paris, 51 rue

Vieille du Temple, 75004,

+33 1 42 78 97 24. Steak

frites, confit de canard,

and great garlicky sautéed

potatoes. An authentic

family restaurant, with

raw-sienna vaulted ceilings

and candles on the tables.

King Falafel Palace,

26 rue des Rosiers,

75004, +33 1 42 77 93 13.

L’As du Fallafel,

34 rue des Rosiers,

75004, +33 1 48 87 63 60.

La Belle Hortense, 31 rue

Vieille du Temple, 75004,

+33 1 48 04 71 60. A literary

bar/cafe, with walls lined

with books and interesting

art. Lectures on the likes of

Proust’s Au Recherche du

Temps Perdu are a feature.

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AbOVE One of the Christian Lacroix-designed guest rooms at Hôtel du Petit Moulin. fROm fAR lEfT Boutique in the Marais; the garden at Musée Carnavalet; Sunday-morning musicians at place des Vosges.

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galleries and street art. A place charged not only with history and culture, this district has an edginess that tempers the saccharine of Paris’s inevitable tourist clichés.

We’re staying in a hotel tucked discreetly behind the vaulted arcade that runs along the northern edge of the oldest and arguably most beautiful square in Paris, place des Vosges. Hôtel Pavillon de la Reine started its life as grand private apartments. More recently, it was home for a year to Jean-Paul Gaultier, who hunkered down in the sprawling Victor Hugo suite, which looks onto a vine-laced courtyard. Eschewing the mod-chic of some of the nearby boutique hotels (apart from its very swishy contemporary bathrooms), Pavillon de la Reine is all creaky, dark-wood luxury and polished service, overlaid with the warmth of a small, intimate hotel.

From this quiet sanctuary, a few steps not only deliver you into the heart of present-day Marais, but to the entire history of the city of Paris at the Musée Carnavalet on rue Sevigné. Madcap iron shop signs hang from ceilings, paintings of the great, the good and the commonplace fill the walls,

and reconstructions of entire rooms – including Marcel Proust’s boudoir – all feature. The garden, which links the museum’s two mansions, is all trimmed hedges and topiary, its formality offset by crumbling remnants of carved masonry stacked around its perimeter.

Nearby, on rue de Thorigny, you’ll find the world’s largest collection of Picasso’s work displayed brilliantly in the maze-like rooms and courtyards of L’Hôtel Salé.

Back on rue Sevigné, part the heavy velvet curtain that circles the entrance to the Piment Café and snuggle in a window seat while the barman brews you a steaming hot chocolate, or grog au rhum (hot toddy) for those who prefer something stronger. Brass pipes snake across the ceiling, channelling beer to the pumps on the counter. Couples, swathed in wispy trails of cigarette smoke, pore over magazines, books or each other. Forget passive smoking – these are impassive smokers, so ignore them back and concentrate on the street life while you decide where to go for dinner. Santé!

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joiN ve+t At ouR ChAmpAgNe diNNeRs

November is Vogue Entertaining + Travel’s Champagne Month, and to help us celebrate, we’re inviting you to a series of dinners at some of the country’s finest restaurants. Each restaurant will design a special menu of at least four courses, and each course will be matched individually with premier offerings from France’s celebrated Champagne houses.

Hosted by VE+T and the Australian Champagne Information Centre, the events will highlight the diversity of Champagne styles and illustrate their versatility in food-matching. Pol Roger, Louis Roederer, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon, Krug and Billecart-Salmon are among the leading Champagne houses that will be represented at the dinners.

The dinners are presented by VE+T and the winners of the Vin de Champage Award, which is given by the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne to encourage the enjoyment of Champagne in Australia.

Be sure to book early, as in past years they have proved extremely popular and sold out quickly.

south AustRAliA

Date friday 3 November Time 7pmPlace The manse, 142 Tynte St, North AdelaideBookings (08) 8267 4636 from 13 SeptemberCost $180 per person

NeW south WAles

Date Wednesday 15 November Time 7pmPlace Restaurant Assiette, 48 Albion St, Surry HillsBookings (02) 9212 7979 from 13 SeptemberCost $180 per person

WesteRN AustRAliA

Date Thursday 16 November Time 7pmPlace Jackson’s, 483 beaufort St, HighgateBookings (08) 9328 1177 from 13 SeptemberCost $180 per person

QueeNslANd

Date friday 24 November Time 7pmPlace River House Restaurant, 301 Weyba Rd, NoosavilleBookings (07) 5449 7441 from 13 SeptemberCost $145 per person

viCtoRiA

Date Tuesday 28 November Time 7pmPlace Rockpool bar & Grill, Shop 1, 8 Whiteman St, Southbank, melbourneBookings (02) 9252 1888 from 13 SeptemberCost $180 per person

La Chaise au Plafond,

10 rue du Tresor, 75004,

+33 1 42 76 03 22. Bar/

cafe/restaurant with a

soundtrack of world music.

La Perle, 78 rue du

Temple, 75003, +33 1 42 72

69 93. This café/brasserie

is the hangout du jour of

fashion students. Watch

them from your booth as

they smoke and scribble,

and witness the potential

evolution of a new Lacroix.

Piment Café, 15 rue

de Sevigné, 75004,

+33 1 48 04 02 77.

Un Piano sur le Trottoir,

7 rue des Francs-Bourgeois,

75004, +33 1 42 77 94 94.

Named for the cute little

lace-draped piano in the

window. Touristy but nice.

Where to shop Fiesta

Galerie, 45 rue de Temple,

75004, +33 1 42 71 53 34,

fiesta-galerie.fr. Retro and

repro 20th-century furniture,

fripperies and lighting.

Marche des Enfants

Rouges, rue Charlot, 75003.

Busy daily produce market.

Moskovitch et Cie,

16 rue des Rosiers, 75004,

+33 1 48 87 48 88.

Shimji, 7, Rue du Perche,

75003, +33 1 42 72 10 01.

A belle addresse; that is,

utterly fabulous. Fashion

for him and her, described

by fashionlines.com as

“ethno-urban-global-bio”,

whatever that means.

We just love the decor.

Shine, 15 rue de Poitou,

75003, +33 1 48 05 80 10.

Collections include Marc

Jacobs shoes, See by

Chloë and Olga de Polga.

Getting there Virgin

Atlantic flies daily between

Sydney and London via

Hong Kong, 1300 727 340,

virgin-atlantic.com.

Eurostar connects

London and Paris in

2½ hours, eurostar.com.

Trains to Champagne

from Paris leave from Gare

de L’Est, sncf.com.

For more information

on the Champagne region,

visit champagne-cic.

com.au or tourisme-en-

champagne.com.

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The trad-brasserie food wouldn’t win any awards,

but Un Piano sur le Trottoir’s quaint shopfront and atmospheric interior

make it a romantic little spot for dinner.