The Great Champagne Tour – Taittinger and Mumm

Usually, most people who go to Champagne spend a leisurely long weekend. They may have forgotten to book their cellar tours in advance, but you can still probably get on a few, even if it isn’t your choice Champagne house. Others from across Europe tend to drive around the Cru villages and visit grower houses to stock up on cheaper stuff without a brand name.

But, if you’re anything like me, you’ll book a week off and cram 10 tours along with countless other stops in Champagne houses to try as many as humanely possible. And I do say humanely possible with meaning because the acidity and bubbles can begin to get a little bit much if that’s all you’ve sated your thirst with for a week. I’ll admit to having a beer or two to give myself an interim break!

The heart of the Champagne experience centers around the city of Reims and the town of Epernay. I’d suggest this is a great way to do Champagne if you haven’t got a car and want to spend time seeing major sites and major houses. In any case, no car is highly recommended if you want to taste as much as possible!

Reims holds a lot of the history with an incredibly impressive Norte-Dame and attached Tau Palace, St Remi’s Basilica and a Roman triumphal arch. Not too far off is the Fort de la Pompelle which saw a good bit of action in WW1 if you want a different kind of historical break, but there is plenty of history in the Champagne houses to enjoy too. Besides the 250km of underground chalk cellars, around every corner you’ll find a Champagne house to take you in and have a tasting at. Whilst we walked it, it is about 40 minutes by foot between the center of town and some of the biggest Maisons, but the transport system was good when we used it and Uber was easy enough to get a ride with too.

As you can imagine there are a lot of houses in Reims, the ones I visited being: G.H Mumm, Taittinger, Vranken-Pommery, Ruinart (the bar at least), Veuve Clicquot, Lanson, G.H. Martel and Jacquart (the bar again). It’s got plenty of other houses too although not all open to the public, like Krug and Louis Roederer.

Taittinger Cellar Tour

The first tour was Taittinger and a great start. Probably one of my favourite tours of the whole trip in fact. The Maison now sits on the site of what was once the 13th Century Saint-Nicaise Abbey, which was pulled down during the French revolution. Still there are some remains in their cellar with a small gothic arch that was used by the monks as a map to indicate they were now above the abbey. I’d imagine you’d need that stumbling round these winding cellars after having sampled your latest batch.

The cellars were among some of the most impressive. The Crayeres, as they are known, had the look, feel and benefit of a long history. The Taittinger ones are in the form of deep pits dug in a pyramid shape by the Gallo-Romans, for stability during the chalk mining process, and there were just miles and miles of tunnell and chiseled pick marks all along their immense cellars, packed with millions of ageing bottles.

Historical Tidbits: Taittinger is unusually still in the family hands, whose ancestor the Count of Champagne brought the ancestor of Chardonnay vines back to the region from Damascus. The region has a lot to thank him for today.

The Taittinger Tasting

Of course it ended with a tasting. Across my tours I’d opted for the packages that meant you could taste the house styles rather than the premium stuff (although that didn’t stop us trying a few). I felt this way I’d get a fairer impression and comparison across the houses.

So, the two here to taste were the Taittinger Brut Reserve and Taittinger Prestige Rose, which you could enjoy whilst looking at their mini museum of exclusive collection labelled bottles. I'll skip the well-known Brut Reserve, but the rose deserves a special mention. I’m not usually one to go for a rose Champagne but the Taittinger Rose was so nice that it inspired me to try a lot more rose Champagnes at various bars whilst I was there. And this exploration helped me find my new favourite, although sadly from a grower house Champagne Philippe Martin that seems pretty hard to buy from anywhere other than Champagne itself. Still, back to Taittinger! I’ve always been a fan of their fresh, characterful Champagne, and getting to properly try the strawberry-laden Rose was a nice bonus. Great tour, great Champagne.

Mumm Cellar Tour

After a decent sized lunch to line the stomach, a glass of delicious, toasty Collet Brut and a trip to the Fort de la Pompelle, we were back in Reims ready for our G.H. Mumm tour. The historical Maison itself seemed to be more for functions and the tour took place in the center of operations.

Straight away, if you like the Cordon Rouge bottle stripe, you’ll find it everywhere here. From a grand red carpeted stairway to a red line leading you through the cellars, you can’t miss it. It kicks off with a look at some large old barrels (foudres) that they used to use in Champagne, and then you enter the cellars flanked by the newer inert concrete tanks. After a nod to the statue of Bacchus, you head even deeper into their cellars where you can see all the bottles lined up in their cru sections and, of course, get the talk about how it is made again.

Round a few corners and you see their equivalent of the Champs-Élysées, a huge underground corridor stretching side to side, leaving you wondering just how many bottles are ageing down there. Some number of millions that’s for sure. It ends with an underground museum showcasing their numerous innovations in the region; there are too many to list, but rest assured they embraced change and modernisation in a big way for the region’s overall benefit today.

Historical Tidbits: The Mumm name is in fact of the German nobility, the von Mumms, who started the house in 1827. In 1852, George Hermann Mumm took the reins and stamped his initials on the brand which are still there today. Now looking forwards, they have created the very high-tech Mumm Grand Cordon Stellar, a Champagne designed for consumption in space!

The Mumm Tasting

I just tried the G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge whilst here which I honestly don’t have a memory of ever trying although I am sure I must have at some point…maybe. Nonetheless, I was very happy with it and am resolved to add it to my list of Champagne to buy in the future. A Pinot Noir led blend of the classic 3 varieties, it is ripe, refreshing and had a fairly strong autolytic biscuit note that I tend to prefer in Champagne.

The final houses we visited in Reims were Lanson, Pommery, Martel and Veuve Clicquot. Read part 2 now.