Subterranean world.
Today's statistics: 0 km, average speed zero divided by zero. Whatever that is. The Mercian was left in the Salon Champagne room of the hotel, had not been allowed to stay there however, and was taken out while Heinis Consultants have their meetings. Looks a bit lost leaning against the wall in the lobby.
Had breakfast with Peggy and Ernest, they were on their way to Paris and will fly back to Montana on Saturday. Myself I set off on foot in order to find MUMM, arrived five minutes before the English language guided tour that was to start at 10AM, and was taken along for the show. We were a motley crowd of two Australians, a Canadian, a few English, and the bicycling Norwegian.
We were taken through the caves and told about the traditional champagne producing techniques, like the fermentation process, the remuage of the bottles, or rotating them a few degrees by hand every day, so the sludge or sediment will work its way to the cork. A few thousand bottles are still turned by hand, the large amount is turned by computer controlled machinery. The guide was very persuasive when she told that the quality of the (computer turned) product would be as high as when turned by human hands. She convinced me.
The tour was a tour of the traditional champagne making methods, the traditional tools, the old storage caves, and ended with a tasting of one single glass of champagne. The Australians pointed out that their idea of tasting more involved one bottle each, but a glass was what we got.
Would have loved to see the modern production process, where computers turn racks of bottles, and where the sludge is removed by freezing the neck of the bottle. Remove the cork and shoot out the sludge together (by internal pressure) with the frozen champagne, fill up the bottle with varying amounts of syrup dissolved in old champagne, and then rebottle and label. As an industrial process, the shooting out of the frozen sludge from a few thousand bottles must have certain surrealistic qualities.
Plan to leave early tomorrow. I'll do a round of the Montagne de Reims vineyards, and move on towards Troyes. Will probably not make it that far, lunch there on Thursday is more likely. We'll see.
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