Monday, July 13, 2009

A Day in the French Countryside with Wine


The wine celler looks a lot like the catacombs, only with higher ceilings and bottles instead of bones.

Today was a lovely, sunny day, and we had a great time with a tour of a French winery. We headed out of Paris by train and rode through the countryside, seeing quaint little villages along the way. Epernay is a beautiful town with a picturesque church and lots of shops and restaurants. We all had lunch at a pizzeria, and then we had an hour to explore the town before heading to the winery. I stumbled upon a small park with very colorful flowers and a town square with a fountain. Then we met at the winery for the tour. We were given a history of the Moet-Chandon family. It turns out Dom Perignon was a real person who discovered how to make wine effervesce, thus discovering the secret of champagne. We learned how the wine is actually a mixture of three different kinds of grapes and how they add yeast and sugar. The way the sediment is removed is quite fascinating. The bottles are turned upside down and rotated slowly every day for six weeks by hand (okay, some are done by machine, but some are still done the traditional way). Then the top of the bottle containing the sediment is frozen. When the cap is taken off the bottle, the pressure inside built up from the fermentation pops out the frozen sediment. Then more wine is added to fill the bottle, and it is aged some more. The tour culminated in a wine tasting event with both white and rose and ended up in the gift shop! This trip is easily one of the highlights of our stay in France. Tomorrow is Bastille Day, and tonight there is a free concert on the square down the road. We walked down the street to check it out.



French Frog waits patiently for his tour of the Moet-Chandon Winery.


He says it was well worth the wait.


The little park nearby held beautiful flowers

2 comments:

  1. Did French Frog get looped? Enjoy Bastille Day. Remember, the cemetery is open.
    PJS

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