"Wow, what’s that? It’s impressive and looks like a castle!"
The imposing Pommery estate with its pompous metal gate was the first building to catch my attention in Reims, which makes sense for a city known worldwide for its Champagne, and one of its most famous Champagne producers.
The Pommery Champagne House was founded by Alexandre-Louis Pommery in 1836. Jeanne-Alexandrine Pommery, his widow, took over in 1858 after he passed away. As Madame Pommery wanted to increase her business by building a distinctive luxury brand, she decided to combine all her winemaking activities. Therefore, the Domaine Pommery was built, designed in an Elizabethan neo-Gothic style with turrets, crenellations and donjon towers in order to make the English, main consumers and frequent visitors, feel welcome. It took Madame Pommery more than 10 years to build the 55 hectare Estate with exterior buildings, 25 hectares of vineyards and 18 kilometers of champagne galleries. Walking through the huge metal gates, down the long road and standing inside the immense reception hall, visitors are well aware of the Estate’s dimensions size and can’t miss Pommery’s interest in art. A colorful Ferrari, a lifelike elephant standing on its trunk and several modern paintings on iron bars are exhibited around the hall, and a short film introduces the contemporary art exhibition, ‘l’esprit souterrain’, down in the cellars. Despite the art and the pleasant background music, the hall seems cold, empty and luxury, the special feature one expects from a Champagne house, is missing. The cheap looking aluminum chairs and tables in a corner leave one wondering if that is where the champagne tasting will take place.
Right on time for the Pommery Cellars ‘Art of Champagne’ tour, tour guide Marie (29) gathers her visitors. She chose her job to share her love of French culture with tourists and seems excited to start talking about Champagne. The overwhelmingly ‘grand staircase’ leads down 116 steps to the cellars, with an amazing lighting sequence moving up and down the railing. The cellars are made of chalk, with 98-percent-humidity – the walls really are wet to the touch - and a constant temperature of 10 degrees. Ideal conditions to preserve and store champagne, but chilly, “It’s cold, I should have brought a jacket” remarks a visitor. The names of several big cities were discovered, carved into the walls. Each name marked storage space reserved to markets Pommery entered.
Walking down the aisles, Marie explains in detail, to considerate attention from the visitors, how Champagne is produced. The process has strictly defined rules: only grape varieties “pinot noir”, “chardonnay” and “pinot meunier”, grown in the Champagne-area and harvested exclusively by hand, can be used to blend champagne. In order to guarantee stable quality and taste Pommery then blends a combination of wines from the current harvest and reserve wines. The second fermentation takes place in bottles, sealed with a crown cap with added sugar and yeasts. The released carbon dioxide is trapped inside the bottle, creating the sparkle in the wine. As an incredible 40 percent of the bottles would explode during this process, Champagne producers continued to improve the quality of the glass since 1730s. Nowadays the bottles can resist 3 times the pressure that they did earlier. We curiously crowd around Marie when she shows with a flashlight the sediments, that develop inside the bottles and give the Champagne its bouquet and aroma.
Surprisingly, the classic Pommery Brut Royal takes only 3 years of ageing before the sediments are removed. In order to do this, the bottles are installed on riddling racks upside down and nowadays turned mechanically for one week. Fittingly loud sounds echo through the cellars as over 70 workers in the Pommery cellars still manually riddle the larger bottles for over one month. Lastly dosing liquor with a precise amount of sugar is added. Before Madame Pommery’s revolutionary Brut in 1874, people used to drink Champagne with more than 100g sugar per Liter – sweeter than a can of Coca Cola nowadays.
“That is the most amazing part of the tour, to explore those huge galleries with the high ceilings, the huge amount of meticulously piled up bottles. And 18 kilometers of cellars is just crazy”, a sweet, elderly couple with a Macedonian accent remark. The same reverent feeling seizes the group now standing in front of the huge Salmanazar bottle that contains 9 liters, allowing to serve about 80 people. Amused laughter sounds as we learn that bottles can be opened with a saber but also with high heels or sometimes smartphones. “Don’t keep Champagne in your own cellar for too long, it loses its sparkle. Buy it for an event and drink it!” comes as a surprise to a man who seems to have had a couple of bottles stored in his own cellar for a while now. Walking around the last corner the tour was surprisingly already over as the time flew by.
Back in the reception hall it is a relief to be out of the cold and see some daylight again. Disappointingly the Champagne tasting does take place on the cheap looking silver aluminum chairs. “It’s not worthy of the product, it’s not how I expected the atmosphere to be”, a group of German tourists complained. Trying my first sip I was fascinated by the sparkle inside my mouth and the surprisingly dry taste. “It’s hard to tell the difference if you are not an expert, but all of them are nice” the Macedonian couple laughed. “But that one is especially bubbly”.
More information:
Book a ticket for the tour:
Franziska Brauer
Comments