Our Visit to the Champagne Region of France – Reims and Verdun

After leaving Paris via our rented car and surviving the parking garage fiasco (read this post to catch up on that Experience) we headed to France's Champagne wine region and the city of Reims. I really wanted to explore some of the famous wine regions of France and Alena loves champagne so this area seemed a perfect choice to start our road-trip through France. But before we arrived in Champagne we had a little historical detour that I will never forget.

When planning our drive to champagne, I looked at a map of France and how far east Reims was and I noticed that it presented us with the opportunity to visit the battlefield memorials of Verdun. It added a couple of extra hours of driving that first day, but I did not want to pass up the rare opportunity to see a historical site like Verdun.

Verdun is the site of a famously tragic and deadly World War One battle. According to Wikipedia:

"The Battle of Verdun lasted for 303 days and became the longest and one of the most costly battles in human history. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, for an average of 70,000 casualties a month; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000 during the battle, with 1,250,000 suffered at Verdun during the war."

This battle was a quintessential example of the trench warfare and the relentless shelling that the First World War is famous for. This was the place flamethrowers were first used in battle. It was quite intense to walk in the footsteps of such history and horrors.

I had first really learned about the Battle of Verdun about 3 years ago through Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast on WWI called "Blueprint for Armageddon". It is an amazing podcast and is free to download. In one of the episodes he went into great detail on the Battle of Verdun. Listening to him read first hand accounts of the unprecedented shelling and horrible conditions of Verdun really struck a cord with me. He spoke repeatedly of the intense shelling (estimated that over 1,000,000 shells were fired by Germany over the first 10 hours of the battle) and how the forest lands of Verdun were so upheaved by the shelling, the battlefield looked like the moon, void of all vegetation and pockmarked by immense craters. He said that if you still went there today you would see that the earth has yet to even itself, with these scaring craters still disturbing the forest floors. This image was burned into my mind 3 years ago, so when the opportunity came to visit Verdun to see these sites for myself I absolutely had to.

We visited the Memorial at the Trench of the Bayonets (Tranchée des Baïonnettes), where a unit of French troops was buried alive by shell explosions, leaving only their rifles protruding above the ground, with bayonets fixed. They were not found until after the war when a soldier returned to the field and saw that some bayonet tips were sticking out of the ground. You can go today and still see these tips poking out of the soil, a reminder of the intensity of loss associated with the battle for Verdun.

Alena and I walked through the "Ravine of Death" where much of the most intense fighting and shelling occurred. They estimate that there are still about 100,000 or so bodies buried in this forest that have yet to be unearthed. Walking through that hallowed forest is something I will never forget.

After Verdun we backtracked a bit toward Paris and made our way to Reims. Reims is a historically significant city in this region, famous as the location of choice for the coronation of France's kings for over 1,000 years. On our first evening we walked from our AirBnB to see the famous cathedral were all these famous kings were crowned.

The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims is my favorite cathedral we have visited on our whole trip so far. It was so beautiful and the history of this church is unrivaled. Its history dates back to Roman times with many interesting events occurring on the grounds since. Joan of Arc was a frequent visitor to the cathedral when Charles the 7th was King of France and there are multiple statues and informative placards in her honor. This cathedral did an amazing job placing little posters and signs all throughout the inside of the church. These explained the theological and historical significance of the various artifacts within along with the general history of the church itself. It was really amazing to walk though and be in awe at the history and the beauty.

At the back of the church there are special stained glass windows designed by multiple artists. The centerpiece of these colorful displays is the 3 part stained glass artwork created by Marc Chagall. Each panel beautifully depicts scenes from the Old Testament, the New Testament and the history of France, respectively. We went back one morning when the sun had just risen to see them in their full radiance.

Given Reims is the unofficial capital of the Champagne wine growing region, it is fitting that one of the stained glass sets is dedicated the craft of wine making. The left panel shows the planting and growing of grapes. The middle the harvest and crushing periods. And the right the making of wine from grape juice.

My favorite part of the Cathedral was all the carvings and gargoyles on its facade. My favorite statue was the famous "Smiling Angel". It was just such a fun statue and is right there on the front, next to the main entrance of the church. Other people seem to agree as I found out she has quite the cult following. (Not a real cult as far as I know) I thought she kinda looked like the popular internet meme of the fist pumping baby:

Seems pretty close to me!!!

We came to Reims to taste champagne as well as see the sites. We had seen the sites and I was ready to drink! We started our tasting at one of the large champagne houses that are well known and pushed hard by the tourism arm of the city. They are a very famous, prestigious, expensive and a bit overrated (as are most of the large champagne houses). We visited Taittinger which seemed to have the best reviews, was moderately priced and had an interesting history behind its property.

We did their basic cave tour in which you get a brief history of Taittinger, an explanation of the processes of making champagne, a tour of their historical caves and a taste of their flagship brut champagne, all for €20 per person. We enjoyed the history tour and going deep underground as their caves are truly amazing. They are Roman chalk mines that were preserved and turned into wine caves. But overall the tour felt a bit stuck up and contrived compared to other winery tours I've done. The Mumm tour and tasting in Napa, CA is a far better experience with a more in depth production lesson and a way better tasting.

We were glad to get to the end of the tour to finally get our first tasting of champagne in France! The wine was good but super expensive. It was not any better than the smaller and cheaper producers we would later try. I was also a bit disappointed to only get to try one type of their wine. A tasting of any additional wines was €10 more per taste. Which is crazy expensive. So we skipped this and just went and bought a whole bottle of champagne at a local wine shop for less than the €20 we would have spent to taste anything more at Taittinger.

Visiting a large champagne house was an interesting introduction to the champagne region and is always cited as a must do while in Reims. I enjoyed seeing the caves and learning about the history, but personally I would skip the big Reims houses if you have any wine experience or have toured another sparkling wine producer before and already understand the process. Save your money for actual wine and go visit some of the smaller producers in the area!

The next morning we did exactly that. We were a bit overwhelmed by the countless number of champagne wineries we could visit, but were we told by a local that the wineries that were open for tasting and wanted people to visit would have a sign on the side of the road saying DEGUSTATION. So instead of picking wineries to visit, we picked a couple towns and decided to head there and try to find somewhere fun to taste some champagne.

Our first destination was Hautvillers, famous for being the home of Dom Perignon (the person not the wine) and its beautiful views as seen above.

Our plan worked out amazing. We immediate found a sign for Champagne G. Tribaut and pulled up to their beautiful winery overlooking the Marne Valley. This ended up being my favorite winery we visited in all of France. The tasting experience was great, the people super nice and the champagne was delicious.

We stayed at Tribaut for almost two hours enjoying this view and slowly tasting the many champagnes they had available to try. It was only €10 per person to each taste your choice of 3 champagnes out of the 9 available. And to clarify they were 3 full glasses of champagne for €10, not little tasting pours! We each selected 3 different wines so we could taste 6 in total. Our tasting guide was the founder's granddaughter who now ran the business. It was amazing to have her explain the wines to us and tell us a bit of the history of the winery.

We loved the wines (specially this blanc de noir which we enjoyed a few nights later) and ended up buying two of their bottles, both around €15-€20! Our favorite was their 2008 reserve champagne, which was the best champagne I've ever had and Alena said she's never tasted champagne like it before. It was super reasonably priced at about €40 per bottle, but was a bit outside our tight budget for this trip. We did debate buying a case or two to ship back to Cali and try to sell, It was that good!

We walked off some of the champagne tasting by heading across the village to the little church where Dom Perignon's tomb is located. Dom Perignon was a French Benedictine monk who made important contributions to the production and quality of champagne in the 1700's. During this time most of the region's wine production was still (non-bubbly) red wines. He's the dude that helped to put champagne as we know it on the map.

Afterward we headed to a well known lunch spot in the town of Mancy for some grub. We were officially welcomed at our table by this friendly gentleman who insisted on shaking my hand!

Our lunch buffet of anti-pastas and steak with frites was topped off with a great molten chocolate fudge cake. It was the perfect heavy meal to fuel some more champagne tastings!

As we were leaving the restaurant we noticed there were many certificates and medals on the walls from Verdun awarded to local heroes. The infamy and bloodshed of Verdun was felt and is remembered throughout France, as over and over again when we visited towns small and large we saw memorials to Verdun in the form of street names, large public statues or small remembrances from local soldiers who were at Verdun like these medals.

The second and last stop on our agenda for the day was the town of Bouzy. For obvious fun name reasons we put that on our short list of champagne villages to visit. We saw the all important "degustation" on a small sign on the outskirts of Bouzy. So we headed down a long gravel road and at the end we found Champagne Bernard Tornay.

The tasting there was free and the champagne was very good. They had some unique wines that were very well priced, most under €15. The only downside was the winery manager who was giving us our tasting did not speak English. I expected this to be the case in some of our tasting experiences so we made it work with our limited French wine phrases (with some amazing translating by Alena!). But it definitely took away a bit from the tasting experience when I couldn't understand all the fun info he was trying to tell me. It was also difficult to ask any thoughtful questions about the wine or the winery. That is what I get for coming to France and not knowing a speck of French! Overall we enjoyed our experience and we were grateful for his patience during our tasting. We left Bouzy with a nice bottle of rosè champagne that we ended up pairing with some bbq pork ribs a week later.

Before we left Reims, Alena did a shopping run for road trip snacks. She returned with a great surprise for me, a Kinder Surprise! I had heard of these fellas but never had one myself.

I was excited to try it and we cracked it open at a rest stop on the highway. The chocolate was decent but the best part was the popping open the surprise!

We found a foxy friend inside, who we taped to our dash to keep us company on the long drives ahead.

We took a different road out of Reims on our way to Fontainebleau, and we were again rewarded with some amazing views of the champagne vineyards. Looking out over the wineries and vineyards is always a fun way to pass the time, so we enjoyed our last picnic in champagne before getting back on the road.