Hautvillers, Metz

Abandoned house, fixer upperer? At Hautvillers.

Day 9: after setting off to buy a car battery, it starts on the 3rd go, so it's off for champagne tasting. Hautvillers is the resting place of Dom Perignon. Everyone in town credits him for creating champagne. Everyone outside this town says this story is rubbish.

Lunch is awful. The champagne tasting places are great. All the villages are in amazing condition. The boys play in the park in our street before dinner.

Widows love kids.

Day 10: morning in Reims, to visit the champagne places in town. First stop is Veuve Cliquot, because we can. Too late for the cave tour though.

The happiest woman alive.

The Taittinger factory. 5 million odd bottles/year.

2nd stop is Taittinger. Valerie Taittinger is one of the heir to this family company. Asking "does your dad own a brewery?" would be a grave mistake! A supermodel millionairesse with a life supply of top shelf champagne is the definition of hard to get.

Going underground is fun for kids too.

The tour goes way underground, where the temperature is 10 or 12 degrees. This is where the champage sites while it ferments. Remove the sediment involves having the bottles half upside down, and turning it a quarter each day for a week or two, then freexing the neck, then pulling out the resulting ice cube containing the muck (slow process!). Then they top it up a bit, and cork it.

72,000 bottles in this room. A LOT of $e$.

The walls, roof and everything is chalk. The Romans quarried the chalk out around 2000 years ago for making concrete. Good Italian stuff. They still don't know how they did it. It's super strong and still around places.

6 bottles, a snap at 620 e$. Includes wooden box.

Clément Aplati (pictured here) is Ollie's school project. You take him with you on holidays, then use the pictures to tell the story of the region, answer questions on the terrain, the typical food, the history etc. He's a paper cutout, so easy to colour and take along.

Taittinger is sponsoring the Soccer World Cup.

In the afternoon we got to Paris, an hour odd away. They say it's gay, but I like it.