I’m sort of losing the plot with this! Generally once I start editing my photographs the story starts to fall in to place, but this evening I’m not getting that so this could be a ramble! 😊. And now I’ve decided to split it in to two days!!
Being a public holiday Reims was pretty quiet on Monday. We planned visits to two Champagne houses, Pommery (well it is actually Vranken Pommery) and Tattinger.
One can get the day in rightly walking to a venue, waiting for and doing a tour, tasting the product and moving on!! Especially when the sun is shining.
After making a fortune in the wool industry Mr Pommery decided to retire when Madame Pommery adiscovered she was pregnant at the age of 38, more than 17 years after the birth of her first child. Mr Pommery needed to go back in to business. The wool industry was in crisis, however, the Champagne trade was booming. Mr Pommery died a year after the birth of his daughter, Louise, and Madame Pommery continued with the business, building the Pommery brand. She converted Roman chalk quarries, which run under Reims, in to wine cellars. Miners dug 18km of inter-connected galleries formed of barrel vaults and rib vaults. Mde Pommery named each of the cellars after the markets she had conquered.
Pommery blue sculpture at the front of the Domaine.
In 1903, master woodworker Emile Gallé was commissioned to decorate the Grand Foudre Pommery: an immense wine barrel with a capacity of 75,000hl (equivalent to 100,000 bottles). The barrel remained in use until 1973, paying homage to the bonds of friendship between the two sides of the Atlantic.
France is represented as a woman seen from the back, standing in the vines, offering a glass of Pommery Champagne to her transatlantic cousin. America is meanwhile depicted as an exotic creature with luxuriant hair, astride a sort of sphinx with the head of a Native American, symbol of the young America. Above, a third female figure, dressed in flowing robes and seated on a curule chair, suggests a pensive genie of enterprise, flanked on the left by the Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” in the port of New York. Below, under a sky of vines loaded with grapes, we see a view of the town of Rheims dominated by its famous cathedral.
The gigantic Pommery barrel was transported by ocean liner to the New World, where it starred in the St Louis World’s Fair. It now stands in splendour in the visitor reception hall of Champagne Pommery, displaying the signatures of the artist and his collaborators for all to see.
This elephant is a taxidermy by Daniel Firman, who concluded that, at a distance of 18000km above the earth an elephant could balance on her trunk – why she would want to!!!!
After Pommery we headed to Tattinger. Having purchased our tickets, we had an hour to wait and decided to get some lunch nearby. Well…. we met the Italian mama of all mama’s and the subservient papa! Alarms bells should have rang as soon as we walked in but the place was busy and included a couple we had met briefly at Pommery. We perused the menu, decided on mains because of time, and waited….
We placed our order… but it was explained, with sign language, that we couldn’t have anything hot!! Ok, a frommage salade for Paul and an Oceania salade for Hazel and a bottle of Cotes du Rhône, which never arrived! I don’t have a picture of the frommage salad… a plate piled hight with chopped iceberg lettuce with a pool of melted cheese in the centre 🤔. Good for Paul, he ate the cheese! I will let you make up your own mind on the Oceania salade! Alright, if you like sweetcorn! At €28 it was a very expensive lunch!!
On to Tattinger for an excellent, clear, straightforward presentation on how Champagne is made…. Tattinger is still run by the Tattinger family.
On the way home we visited the Basilique Saint-Reim and watched some locals boules.
H&P Adventures 