We're in France - our first ramble
YES! We are back in France, at our “home away from home,” Bois-le-Roi. We’re working to get past jet lag, seeing old and dear friends and meeting new ones, and, of course, laying in an adequate supply of essentials for our stay here.
Today, then, to make sure we were well-equipped with the most essential item for our stay, we went with Mary and Gilles to one of our favorite places: Bourgeois-Boulonnaise Champagne, in the town of Vertus, smack in the middle of the champagne region. Now, I suspect many of you faithful readers have visited an American winery for tastings and you know they generally are pretty classy - and pretty commercial, with ballcaps, t-shirts, wine-openers and other miscellaneous merchandise available, all beautifully logo’d. Even better, you get to pay for the privilege of trying their wines. Well, I think you should see the tasting room of one French champagne maker…
The tasting process: Madame Bourgeois-Boulonnaise asks us what we’d like to try. We opted for blanc de blancs: 100% chardonnay grape. She puts out five glasses (because of course she’s going to have some) and goes out to get a bottle of our choice. We all get a couple glasses—no one-ounce pours here—then place our orders. While they gather the order, we have another glass. Then we load the car, say our good-byes with the comment “A la prochaine” (“until next time” - and I guarantee there will be a next time), and off we go.
Laurie and I bought 24 bottles: six of a lovely rosé champagne, six of “traditional” brut (chardonnay and pinot noir) and 12 of our favorite blanc de blancs. That should be enough for three months. If not, we know where to get more…
We did not buy any ballcaps, t-shirts, wine-openers or any other merchandise because there aren’t any. What we get here is a beautiful champagne, nothing else.
How much does this cost? These champagnes would likely retail for around $60-80 if they were sold in the United States which they are not. In a store here in France, I’ve seen online sales of their top champagne for about $50. At the winery: they averaged about $20 per bottle. Though we love champagne, we’re not experts, but I can tell you these are as good and probably better than any sub-$100 champagne we’ve had in the U.S.
Bourgeois-Boulonnais bottles around 60,000 bottles a year - small potatoes against Moet et Chandon (5 million bottles per year), Taittinger (6.7 million) and the other big houses. We think Bourgeois-Boulonnais bubbly is every bit as good as the average bottle from those houses and better than the lower-end lines they produce. Madame’s champagnes are just delightful to drink. So we bought 24 bottles!
A Victory!
After a lot of fussing and fighting, we got the French SIMs to work in our phones. This should have been easy, but wasn’t, and finally took the combined brain-power of Gilles and me to get them working. Nice to have French phone numbers over here.
Comments
Yay! I’ve been waiting for this. Glad you have your priorities in order! - Carol N.