Did you say boozy?

No. I said Bouzy. It's pronounced basically the same,* by the way. But Bouzy is the name of the town where our rental house was located. You can see it below, from up on the slopes of the vineyards. The church steeple you see is the one with all the bells.

The town of Bouzy in Champagne, on the southeastern flank of the Montagne de Reims.

The town felt kind of sleepy, but it wasn't really. Each morning we'd hear trucks and tractors as they made their way from garages to the vineyards, or transporting bottles (probably empty) to winemakers, or even transporting wine to market. The bakery bustled and there was some light traffic in town during the morning and evening commute periods.

The town's only grocery was closed for remodeling, so we had to go to the next town over to buy groceries. That town was a little bigger and it felt like it had a little more going on.


* Except that the stress is on the second syllable: [boo-ZEE].

The house we rented

The gîte we rented in Champagne was in the middle of the town of Bouzy, but the property was large enough to have a good courtyard and green space. It had a gate that closed us off from the street and Callie could be out in the yard with no worries. We didn't feel cramped at all. I noticed that wherever we were in the house or on the property, we had complete privacy; there were no windows facing us at all.

Our home away from home in Champagne, along with the car we rented for the trip.

The people who own the house live right across the street. They are winemakers and have their own label. Their son, who lives next door to them, was really nice and took Ken and me on a tour of their cellar and property, and gave us a wine tasting. His wine is good and we bought some. He told us that they don't make their own wine any more, so all that we were seeing was actually no longer in service. He delivers their grapes to a cooperative where the wine is made and labelled for them.

The house was nice and comfortable enough. The only weird thing was that the town's church, whose steeple we could see out the windows, was equipped with a carillon. Every quarter hour, from seven in the morning until ten at night, the bells would ring. The tune at the top of the hour sounded like the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice." The tune was followed by one chime for each hour (ten at ten p.m.!). After that, a single chime for the quarter, two for the half, and three for the three-quarter hour.

Vineyard views in Champagne

It was October and the vines still had leaves. The harvesting was done, but I still saw a lot of people working in the vineyards. What were they doing? I'm not sure, but probably some kind of vineyard maintenance. I think it was too early to be pruning.

A pinot noir patchwork. Looking roughly west, toward Paris.

The vineyards in the first photo are pinot noir grapes on the south-facing slopes of the Montagne de Reims, just outside the town where our rental house was.

Looking northward. I like the grass under the vines.

The vines in the second photo are also pinot noir grapes, but this time on the north-facing slopes of the mountain near Verzenay.

Le Pressoir d'Oger, Château Malakoff.

The third photo was taken looking roughly east from the slopes of the Côtes des blancs, where the grapes are chardonnay. That's a cemetery in the foreground and a grape pressing facility at the top.

More chardonnay. These grapes face the morning sun.

And finally, another look at the chardonnay vineyards on the Côtes des blancs, this time looking up the hill toward the forest at the top. I like the way the vines are planted at different angles to optimize drainage.

I started to think about the differences between the Champagne vineyards and those around where we live in the Touraine. The feel is certainly different. Our local vineyards tend to be smaller parcels surrounded by woods. The Champagne vineyards seem to be vast, mostly uninterrupted seas of vines. The Touraine wine industry feels smaller, more individualized, with small growers making their own wine (there are many cooperatives around, too). Champagne felt much more corporate, with outposts of big wine houses (with familiar names) for pressing and fermenting mingled in with the smaller producers.

By the numbers, if my conversions and calculations are correct, Champagne's vines cover nearly 82,000 acres compared with Touraine's more modest 14,000 acres. And Champagne produces about 352 million bottles a year, whereas Touraine's annual production is only about 37 million bottles. While these numbers may not be completely accurate due to my less-than-rigorous research, they do reflect the huge difference in scale between the two wine regions.

Pintade à la broche

This is une pintade (a guinea hen) that we recently roasted in the oven. One of the features of many French ovens is a built in rotisserie. It's a very nice option to have when roasting, especially a bird, because of the self-basting.

Roasted guinea hen still on the spit.

If I remember correctly, Ken put a dish of peeled potatoes under the bird to roast in the drippings. Nothing is wasted. And it was delicious, to boot!

We're starting to think about what kind of bird we want to roast for Christmas dinner. I think we've narrowed it down to either a turkey, a guinea fowl capon, or a local black-feathered chicken called a géline de Touraine. The géline is an older breed of farm chicken that died out, but it's been "reconstituted" through the crossing of the black Croad Langshan and the Bress Gauloise Noir breeds. The poultry vendor at our local farmers' market has them, but you have to order them in advance. They cost more than a standard chicken or guinea hen, but the gélines are arguably the best chickens I have ever tasted; worth the price for a special occasion.

They've gone too phare

There is a phare (lighthouse) on the flanks of the Montagne de Reims. The closest serious body of water, the English Channel, is about 225 kilometers (140 miles) away. So what's the deal? From what I read, the lighthouse was built as a publicity stunt back in 1909 by a certain avant-garde champagne merchant named Joseph Goulet.

Le Phare de Verzenay and its museum, with the town down below.

The lighthouse was quite an attraction in its day, but fell into disrepair after the first world war. It was rehabilitated in the late 1990s and is now home to a wine museum. We didn't visit, but we did drive by.

And now, Champagne

While our friend Cheryl was here in October, we drove up to Champagne for four days just to check it out. We rented a gîte in a small town called Bouzy, on the southeastern flank of the Montagne de Reims, not far from the city of Epernay. Our goal was to see what Champagne felt like and to taste a variety of wines.

Part of the town of Verzenay on the northern slopes of the Montagne de Reims.

All three of us had been to Champagne before, mostly the city of Reims, but also to Epernay. Those visits were quick overnights or drive-throughs over the years. This time we wanted to explore a little more. We arrived on a Monday afternoon and after checking in and doing a little food shopping, we made dinner accompanied by a bottle or two of the local bubbly.

The next day, we planned to drive around the base of the mountain. Well, it's not really a mountain, but a large bulge in the otherwise flat countryside of that part of the Champagne region. It's on the flanks of that mountain that you find many of the pinot noir vineyards.

This windmill was built in 1818 on a promontory above the town of Verzenay.

Pinot noir is one of the three grapes that go into a typical Champagne. The other principal grape is chardonnay, mostly grown on the hillsides south of Epernay which are called les Côtes des Blancs (the slopes of white grapes). The third grape in Champagne is pinot meunier, grown mostly in the Marne River valley west of Epernay.

Unless the label on the bottle says otherwise, Champagne is a blend of these three grapes. Also, typically, a Champagne will be blended with wine from the previous year. Winemakers do this so that the finished wine will be more or less consistent from year to year.

Some wines will be pure chardonnay; they are the blanc de blancs. Others will be made from just the red, or black, grapes; they are the blanc de noirs. Other wines will reflect an exceptional year and not be blended with last year's vintage; these are the vintage wines labelled millésime.

We tried some of each. We also tried the red still wine they make in Bouzy. We left no bottle uncorked. Ok, we did because we brought a bunch home with us. We're working on those.

Space, the final frontier

These are our voyages to a wine-making enterprise. Our continuing mission: to explore strange new reds. To seek out new whites, new sparkling sensations. To boldly drink where none of us has drunk before.

If you look into Space you can see the stars.

This is Ken and his friend from grad-school days, Bob, entering the tasting room of a local wine cooperative. The tasting room is called l'Espace. Space. The entrance is this rather dramatic opening in the cliff face.

Bob, Norma, Ken, and I had a great time tasting a variety of their wines, including some sparklers. We even took some of them home with us.

Hailing frequencies are open. Beam me up, Scotty!