24 Hours in Épernay
How to savour a quick stop in the Champagne capital.
Hello world.
I quite like my job. Throughout my life I’ve tended to try and follow what I love and build a living out of it. Originally, that was music. As most of you know, I spent some years as a quasi-professional musician, with varying degrees of success and failure.
This current obsession with wine led me to my role in business development (sales) for the UK outpost of Pol Roger - a 175 year old, family-owned and operated Champagne house. One of my favourite perks of this job (besides the incredibly smart quarter-zip jumper with the house’s name embroidered on the arm) is that I am fortunate enough to be able to visit the HQ in Epernay every so often. Now the wines I’m going to be talking about aren’t the most accessible, every-day style tipples that I intend to mainly focus on in my future writings, but for now, I wanted to share my experience.
Earlier this week, we hopped on the 07:01 train from St. Pancras to Gare du Nord. Fueled by a somehow soggy but also unbelievably dry bacon roll and some questionable coffee, the 2.5-hour journey to Paris was a mixture of frustration at not being able to do emails (how hard is it to have good WiFi when you’re 75 metres below sea level?!), and frustration at not being able to have a kip. I’m a notoriously terrible napper, especially while travelling, and found myself stuck in the vicious cycle of drifting off only for my brain to convince my whole body that we were falling from a great height and needed to enter fight-or-flight mode.
Once in Paris we were met by our driver and sped down to Épernay, the capital of Champagne and home of Pol Roger. There, we were greeted by our French colleagues and treated to a lovely bit of lunch in their very impressive new building, with glasses of the Brut Reserve Non-Vintage and the latest release from the house, the Brut Vintage 2018. Both were welcomed with much enthusiasm and set us up perfectly for the rest of the day.
Following our much-needed lunch, we were directed outside to what had turned into quite a fabulous sunny day, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to spend it than 33 metres below street level in Pol Roger’s famous cellars. Spanning around 9 kilometres and housing nearly 10 million bottles, they truly are an impressive sight. In the capable hands of Pol’s CEO, Laurent d’Harcourt, we were taken through the incredible expanse of tunnels - with rows upon rows of bottles stored immaculately throughout the cellars, biding their time before release. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the Riddlers (no, not the Batman villain - although spending your days underground may lead one to ideas of destroying Gotham). The incredibly specialised workers turn all the bottles by hand after secondary fermentation, with one riddler being able to 60,000 bottles a day! All of Pol’s wines are aged on their lees for a minimum of four years, so it’s not surprising that each bottle is treated with such individual care.
Once our tour of the cellars concluded, we resurfaced and had a quick look around the new bottling and packaging facility. The investment in this building has been considerable, with state-of-the-art machinery assisting in the process. I felt like a kid in a candy shop (or, as one of my colleagues loves to say: ‘like a pig in shit’) following a bottle’s journey from the cellars to the pallet - bloody exciting stuff!
After a brief stop off in our hotel to shower and dress for dinner, plus a swift 25cl Belgian Blonde that went down incredibly well in the evening sun, we made our way back to the Maison (that’s French for ‘house’). There we were greeted with a glass of the Brut Reserve Non-Vintage, this time from magnum. If you haven’t tried Champagne out of a magnum I must insist that you do that right now. It’s just a great experience. Something to do with the increased surface area or something like that, all I know is that it tastes fucking good. This one had spent an extra 10 months post-disgorgement, and that extra time in bottle adds another layer of complexity to the wine.
Time for dinner. Prepared by the brilliant Chef Jean-Jacques Lange, each course was a triumph, elevated to a new level by the wines served with them. Now the wines were getting serious. One of the advantages of having 10 million bottles under your feet is that every once in a while you get to taste some really special stuff. The four wines we had on this quiet Tuesday evening in Épernay were no exception.
Recently, the house released a very limited series, the Vinothèques. A selection of cuvées from exceptional vintages in the past 20+ years, bottled with a new design to celebrate 175 years of Pol Roger. The first of these was the Blanc de Blancs 2000. There are three main grapes allowed in Champagne: Pinot Noir, Meunier, and Chardonnay. A Blanc de Blancs wine is made entirely from white grapes, and delivers rich, stunning flavours. This is my favourite style of Champagne, and the 2000 did not disappoint. It was the richest, most warming and welcoming experience I have had from a glass, with layers and layers of complexity - each sip providing a new waves of flavour. Dried flowers, chamomile, lemons, pears, apricots, and the most moreish umami notes covered my palate. It’s safe to say I was in heaven while drinking this wine, and it went rather well with the turbot.
Next up, the Brut Vintage 2002. This wine was 60:40 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, from a truly excellent vintage. This backbone of Pinot Noir provided more structure and finesse than the Blanc de Blancs, but still with that incredible richness you find in aged Champagne. Fresh fruits and brioche notes join together to form a sort of citrus tart, with some more exotic and tropical flavours coming through as well. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Something special this way comes: The Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1998. My birth year, and a vintage that is gaining more appreciation over time (much like me, I think). The wine is named after Pol Roger’s most notorious fanboy, the cigar-loving, Honburg-donning Sir Winston Churchill. It’s said he drank over 40,000 bottles of their wine in his lifetime. This wine was outstanding, and I’m sure my personal bias for the year had something to do with how good it tasted. Dried fruits, ginger, honey, and a beautiful sustained richness - incroyable.
The final bottle of the evening was the Vintage Rosé 1999. A very unique wine with lovely spicy aromas. A strong pink colour, with a slight orange hue from the age. I’ve always been on the fence about aged rosés but it’s safe to say this left me pleasantly surprised. Flavours of stewed red berries and a layer of cloves and spices, with quite a firm structure - Pol make a very small amount of rosé compared to their other cuvées, so it was a real treat to taste this.
What a truly memorable evening it was. The next day, after a light spot of lunch (I opted for a very modest serving of two baguettes stuffed to the brim with yummy fillings) and a civilised train ride home, I found myself smiling at how lucky I was to be treated to such hospitality by our colleagues over the Channel. The Vinothèque is now available in England, sold at a reassuringly expensive price point, with very few bottles up for sale.
Until we meet again,
Magnus