As befits its founding ethos as a champagne ‘for the people’, Mercier’s sprawling modern site lies well beyond the well-tended cobbles of the Avenue de Champagne proper – in fact, it’s so real I can even see tower blocks from the car park. As we lock up, a large hairy mastiff emerges yawning from a Belgian saloon car, the owner pleading its case with the security guards, begging for just a few minutes of air-conditioned relief for the animal. He, and the dog, lose, and it’s tethered in the shade, where I can see the doormen eyeing it warily for possible infractions of politeness.
I shoot it an apologetic glance as we enter a cool, almost hanger-like space dominated by an enormous carved wooden barrel. On the end facing us, two meaty-looking broads are fondling a bunch of grapes, apparently representing the historic friendship between Champagne and Britain (a relationship that, I’m pleased to say, remains strong to this day; for all the other political shenanigans between the two countries, the UK is the world’s largest importer of champagne). The audio-guide informs us that this barrel was a gimmick (rough translation) dreamt up by the house’s entrepreneurial founder, self-made man Eugène Mercier. Designed to hold 160,000 litres of champagne, it took 16 years to plan and build using 150 Hungarian oaks personally selected by his cooper, the aptly named Jolibois, and once finished was used as a giant advert at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris.
Getting it there was a marketing opportunity in itself. Pulled by 24 oxen and 18 horses, the barrel was so heavy that it crushed its first set of wheels after only 4km, and several buildings that threatened to impede its elephantine progress towards the capital were simply flattened to make way. An excited crowd and newspapers all over the world followed its journey for three whole weeks. Unfortunately, on arrival, even the monster barrel could not quite compete with the highlight of the fair, the Eiffel Tower, but still, having something that big with your name plastered all over it driven 140km to be seen by 32,250,297 visitors at the show itself … well, that can’t have hurt.
I find myself more interested in the ethos of the Mercier house than the way it makes its champagne, which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t appear to have changed much since my last visit. Mercier seems to have been quite the character. The child of a single mother, he went out to work in the vineyards of local monks at an early age, and was clearly pretty good at it given that he managed to realise his dream of starting his own business, a co-operative of small champagne producers, at just 20, when I was still drinking Snakebites.
He struck out on his own 13 years later, founding Mercier Champagne in 1871, and at the turn of the century commissioned the world’s first publicity film from the Lumière brothers (which is basically like asking Tim Berners-Lee to build you a website). It was shown at the Universal Expo of 1900, the same event at which he tethered a Mercier-branded hot-air balloon to the ground and invited people to enjoy a glass of his champagne a thousand feet up in the air.
The plan was to fly the balloon back to Épernay once the fair was over, but strong winds sent it sailing northwards instead, where it crashed down into a wheat field near Belgium. The passengers were found safe and well, toasting their good fortune with champagne – and Mercier was fined for attempted smuggling, a punishment he shrugged off, calling it the cheapest advertising he ever paid for.
The 30-metre-deep cellars to which we descend in a great glass elevator with a motley collection of other visitors were designed by Mercier as yet another tourist attraction: he christened this 18km underground city, directly linked to the Paris–Strasbourg railway, by driving a four-horse calèche round its silent streets. He repeated this feat on the visit of the President of the Republic, Sadi Carnot, in 1891, when they were illuminated by 100,000 candles (though the modern-minded Mercier had in fact had his pride and joy electrified five years earlier).
They were opened to the public – another first – in 1885, and as we climb into a little train, our guide Barbara, a Brazilian, proudly tells us we’ll be conducted around the cellars entirely by infra-red beams. If Eugène Mercier were ‘with us today’, she says, ‘he would have loved the Internet’. I believe it: the man has viral stunt written all over his amazingly moustachioed face.
Mercier was determined to rock the rarefied world of champagne by focusing (one assumes, though it’s never explicitly admitted) on price rather than quality, a view also apparently taken by current owners the luxury LVMH group, who brand his wine as ‘an easy-going champagne for a target market of urban consumers’ in contrast to some of their blingier brands like Krug and Dom Pérignon.
Though it’s the biggest-selling marque in France, Mercier has never really targeted the export market, perhaps because – the man pouring upstairs muses – the Brits in particular view champagne in a different way. I agree wholeheartedly. No one I know really wants champagne to be ‘good value’ – they want to feel decadent, to splurge. Value is for the baked beans you have for dinner afterwards.
To this end, he says, they no longer produce individual vintages: ‘It is not in the spirit of the house. We want to make champagne for everyone.’ I feel gratifyingly of the people, though I’ve shelled out for the most expensive tickets, the Golden Bubbles, which get us three glasses of decent if unexciting fizz: brut, rosé and réserve – of course, champagne socialist that I am, the cheapest does me just fine. I’m sad to leave without a bottle, but having looked at the gradient profile for the afternoon, it feels unwise to splash out just to lend any further support to this democratisation of fizz. Bubbles for all, yes … but not right now.
Something I’ve never noticed on previous visits by car: between Épernay, the capital of champagne-the-Wine, and Reims, Champagne-the-Region’s largest city lies the Montagne de Reims. Its high point, the ambitiously named Mount Sinai, is a mere 286 metres, but as Wikipedia notes, it earns the title by the ‘brutal’ change in gradient between the plain (80 metres) and the slopes on which the vines grow, 200 metres above. Certainly brutal feels the right word as we push up it in the mid-afternoon sun, initially on the gloriously quiet D251, which snakes languidly through the immaculately manicured corduroy of Champillon’s vines, and then on the much-busier D951, which right now seems to be carrying the entire workforce of Épernay home for dinner. At the top of the hill, we stop for some water and a photo, and a closer look at what I’ve decided after gazing at it all the way up is a strong contender for the region’s ugliest building, the super-fancy Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa, though it presumably looks rather better from its outdoor infinity pool with a glass of Krug in hand.
That said, had I known how awful the road to Reims would be, I might have been tempted to pop in and enquire about rates. Though the D951 passes through a nature reserve, in reality it’s no scenic route at rush hour, the carriageway so narrow, despite the generous margins of protected green to each side, that we’re hooted at several times for daring to take up any space on it at all. One ancient BMW with purple tail lights even roars abuse at us as it passes – I stick my finger up at them as they slowly retreat into the heavy traffic and pedal furiously. Later, when it’s all over and we’re enjoying a compensatory ice cream, Gemma confides that she was seriously worried lest I catch him up. I point out that he started it, but nevertheless, it’s probably a good thing that we’re finally separated by a set of lights as the road descends into Reims.
The outskirts boast the usual complement of impenetrable ring roads and incomprehensible cycle directions, and once we finally make it into the centre, a bus turns left into me, necessitating a very noisy emergency stop. By the time we find our hotel, I’m feeling about ready for another drink. And then we go in.
The Monopole (One Star), with its bay-windowed frontage and Edwardian lettering, has the air of a hotel that was once fairly grand, though back in the UK I find it in the 1935 Michelin guide to France listed as ‘simple, offering only partial comforts’. Now, with its ground floor occupied by a punky-looking hairdresser’s and a kebab shop, it has very much ce
ded even this pre-war lustre. A neon sign flickers ‘Open’ all day long above a dim staircase – we lock our bikes to the balustrade, and then to each other for comfort, and advance upwards, squeezing past a man sitting despondently on a large zippered tartan plastic bag, the universal symbol of hard times.
There’s no reception desk, just a young man leaning against the wall on the first floor, who is very keen to confirm we’ve booked a double room. I tell him twin or double, it doesn’t matter, which seems to please him inordinately. A sign tacked on to a closed door behind his head informs us that breakfast is sadly unavailable due to building works. I’ll be honest, this does not make me very sad.
Our room is a cupboard in the eaves, furnished with a small double bed covered with a furry blanket decorated with a leering pink rose. Above, a framed poster instructs us to ‘Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often’. It also boasts the world’s smallest bathroom (easily wresting the crown from the previous title holder in Avranches; thank God Gemma is five foot two to Matt’s six foot three), and handily doubles as a steam room, as the window appears to have been painted shut sometime in the last century.
I’m anxious about bedbugs, Gemma’s worried about football, but one thing that makes us both feel better is an Americano, of the cocktail variety, and a bowl of salty pretzels before our last supper – tomorrow Gemma’s driving back to Paris, and I’m setting off in the same direction under my own steam, so this feels particularly poignant. The next time I see a familiar face will be under the Arc de Triomphe in five days’ time.
L’Alambic is a fitting venue for such an emotional occasion: an atmospherically lit, brick-lined former wine cellar, it would be the perfect spot for a romantic tête-à-tête. Unfortunately, Gemma has to put up with my face across the table, rather than some handsome French man who actually knows what goal difference is, but funnily enough, this little restaurant, picked without too much thought from the guide, offers some of the best food I’ve eaten so far: a pressed cuboid of pink jambon de Reims, which looks disconcertingly like Spam but tastes wonderful, some perfectly cooked turbot and a very generous local cheese plate to finish.
The sweet teenage waiter insists on taking a photo of us grinning awkwardly at the camera (I think he’s hoping one of us might propose), Madame insists on giving us a glass of Marc de Champagne brandy when we go upstairs to pay, and it’s a high-spirited duo who stagger back into the Monopole, where the man on the stairs has gone, to be replaced by some very strange noises from the shuttered breakfast room. Fortunately, we’ve sunk enough booze to fall asleep almost immediately beneath the nylon fur. Not in each other’s arms, though. Sorry, Monsieur Reception.
Km: 140.5
Croissants: 5 (average score: 4.6/10)
High: Snoozing in the sun in the gardens of Épernay’s Hotel de Ville
Low: Garlic Ice-Cream Gate
STAGE 20
Reims to Bondy
Croque Monsieur
The croque monsieur (or ‘crispy mister’) ham and cheese toastie is a relatively modern invention, credited to a Parisian café that ran out of baguettes and had to use soft white bread instead, or workmen who accidentally left their packed lunches on a radiator. The truth is probably more prosaic: salty ham, warm cheese and fried bread is such a delicious combination that perhaps the croque was always inevitable. Found all over France, it’s at its very best in cheese-producing regions.
I feel quite emotional as I cycle with Gemma to the car hire place the next morning to wave her off. While she’s standing up in court tomorrow, I’ll be cross-examining a round of Brie. And believe me, I’ll be thorough.
Before she goes, I insist on buying her a croissant to say a very modest thank-you for my early birthday dinner the night before – tellingly, she goes for curly nature (margarine) and I for straight pur-beurre (8/10, excellent elastic texture, nice crisp outer, slightly lacking in flavour) and I think again that she is the yin to my yang, the cherry to my cake, the faithful domestique to my world-class Chris Froome, and it’s going to be a lonely few days without her.
As if to underline my sad plight, the way out of Reims is a horror-show; a dual-carriageway so terrifyingly fast and busy I stop twice to check I’m on the right road before being finally funnelled off, limp from nerves, onto the rather less stressful D27. It heads straight and flat for some low wooded hills and what looks like a small factory plonked by the side of the carriageway, but in fact turns out to be a concrete grandstand with a commentary box painted with the old BP green-and-gold shield. The sheds either side bear brightly painted advertisements for Pneu Englebert, Phares Marchal and other such antique brands. It’s like cycling round Le Mans: surreal, oddly thrilling and deeply puzzling. Finally, I find a plaque explaining that this little road served as a Grand Prix course between 1926 and 1952, and was the site of the Reims–Gueux 12-hour race in the 1950s and 60s, the first of which was won by Stirling Moss. A group of volunteers is now in the process of restoring it to its full glory, hence the fresh paint.
Gueux itself proves to be a wealthy-looking small town with a fairy-tale church set on a lake, and no fewer than two golf clubs on its fringes – clearly this is Reims’s stockbroker belt. Heading due west, the route is surprisingly hilly after the last couple of days of gently rolling plains, and I find myself climbing through vines again; where once a sign for a champagne producer would have been exciting, now they act as depressing proof of how far I still have to go – each one is surely the last, and then 20 minutes later, another pops up out of nowhere. Actually, the official Champagne grape-growing region stretches as far west as Charly-sur-Marne, about 75km from Reims, which is almost three-quarters of my total for the day.
Nevertheless, it’s dispiriting, and after five days of company, the longest since Matt saw me off in the north-west, strangely lonely on the open road. The scenery is a welcome distraction; the hills supply some lovely views and all this wine wealth makes for exceptionally pretty little villages. On one perfectly empty big dipper of a road, I see a mass of crows on the tarmac ahead. Disturbed by the sudden appearance of a post van from the other direction, they rise as one black cloud, chattering to each other, before settling down again to their well-squashed breakfast, apparently oblivious to my approach. I don’t know whether to be gratified that I make so little environmental impact or offended by what this says about my speed.
I stop for some water in Lagery, which boasts of its 12th-century church, 17th-century market and ‘vestiges du chateau’, though the only sign of life is a call-and-response choir of barking dogs from behind a dozen closed doors as I stretch my legs on an old cattle trough. From there, I seem to be inadvertently following signs for the Abbaye d’Igny. My first sight of this 12th-century Cistercian community is a high stone wall that peeps through the trees, and then suddenly, there it is, still cloistered, still home to an order of Trappist nuns drawn from throughout France, who make some very fine-sounding chocolates. Sadly, the shop is closed for lunch, so I have to fondly imagine what a chocolate champagne cork filled with Marc de Champagne brandy might taste like while tucking into a supermarket apple in the car park instead.
It strikes me that, while I’ve passed lots of places this morning that would be only too happy to supply me with a case or two of champagne, it’s been a while since I saw anywhere that might throw in a ham sandwich to go with it. The closest I’ve come, the wonderfully named Café Lard in Faverolles-et-Coëmy, despite the bravely fluttering tricolore at an upstairs window, looks like it called last orders in 1945. Further on is an immaculate American cemetery, neat white crosses standing to attention in grass mown more sharply than a parade-day buzzcut, but still no shop.
I think the relief of finally finding somewhere open may have sent me a bit mad. That’s the only plausible explanation for emerging from the Super U in Fère-en-Tardenois with a tin of Mediterranean sardines in Tunisian harissa, a faintly Germanic cucumber chive and fromage blanc salad and a huge bagu
ette.
Twenty minutes later, I’m eating the world’s weirdest sandwich perched on a rock in a beauty spot called the Devil’s Basket, while children scramble around me and bright red, fishy-smelling oil drips all over my clean shorts. On the plus side, this does keep the children away.
Hunger sated, I have a brief look at the signboards, and discover the scattered rocks take their curious name from the story of a local man commissioned to build a monastery. Unfortunately, the stone he required was so far away that the client got impatient, medieval-style – which is when the devil turned up and offered to finish it overnight in exchange for the desperate builder’s soul. Sadly, Satan is a poor timekeeper (‘You wouldn’t believe the traffic, squire’) and dawn broke before he’d even got all the rocks in place – forcing him to drop them willy-nilly where they lie to this day. Totally plausible. More interestingly, apparently one of them looks like a giant tortoise, but my stupid shoes are no hooves to be clambering around on, and once I’ve cleaned as much fish juice from myself as possible, I leave the kids to it.
The sun is now so hot that the roads have begun to melt, covering my tyres with a sticky slick, which quickly becomes coated with the tiny pebbles that seem to have been laid down to counter the problem. The noise of them grinding against the mudguards is painful, so I hate to think what effect they’re having on poor Eddy, and the pleasant countryside offers little in the way of shade, just the odd fat pheasant and numerous villages that should offer cold drinks, but don’t. (Not for the first or even the twenty-first time, I wonder where French kids buy their ice lollies and penny sweets.)
One More Croissant for the Road Page 27