October poetry in Monet's garden, Giverny ::
We also had the pleasure of seeing his water-lily pond & Japanese bridge... inspiration for all his water lily paintings.
And of course his famous house.
Since the weather was fantabulously warm for late September, we also went to the Champagne region to visit cellars of champagne houses. There are hundreds of kilometres of chalk cellars below the city of Reims... all owned by the champagne houses. Unfortunately, the one we really wanted to visit - Ruinart - was fully booked so we settled for Veuve Clicquot which was just as impressive.
The guide opening the great cellar doors which would lead us 30metres underground into their chalk cellars, known as caves or 'crayeres' where they age their champagne.
We were guided into huge humid caves with a constant temperature of 10-12 degrees celsius and there, thousands of dusty bottles awaited their destiny to be dressed in the modern VCP colors. The guide also explained the process of sedimentation & degorging of each bottle. I think its nice to know the work that goes behind each glass of champagne we drink.
After that, we were given a tasting of La Grande Dame '98, delicious!
Since we had some time, we also visited Taittinger's cellars... the view underground was amazing... a sea of champagne bottles! they had sections like these - 10 days to pile over 19000 bottles.
With my silly best friend... we were so happy with ourselves that we ended up missing the train back to Paris. Ah moments like these make me miss her so much now that she's gone! Have a bubbly weekend xx
