Day 77, Monday, November 13, 2023. and Day 78, November 14, 2023
Reims is the unofficial capital of the Champagne wine-growing region in France, and many of the champagne houses headquartered here offer tastings and cellar tours. Today we are going to Maison Mumms for a tour and champagne tasting.
I like the yellow leaves on the sidewalk outside our apartment. 
On our way to Maison Mumms we pass the Cimetière Du Nord which opened in 1787. November 1st is All Saints Day in France, this is the day that families visit cemeteries and place pots of chrysanthemums on the graves. We walk through a little bit of the cemetery to see if the flowers are still there and they are. I wish we had more time to explore but we don’t want to be late for our tour of Maison Mumm.
Bob noticed this evergreen that had been trimmed back to reveal a tombstone from 1852 and I liked the statue holding flowers. 
There is a war memorial near the cemetery with bouquets of red, white and blue flowers…the colours of the French flag.
The entrance to Maison Mumms…this is an enormous complex, and it is a wet, cold day. 
We are happy to wait for the start of the tour where it is warm and dry. .
Mumm Champagne has been enjoyed in some very unusual places…When Captain Jean-Baptiste Charcot became the first Frenchman to set foot on Antarctica ,in 1904 he celebrated with a bottle of champagne.
In 2022 astronauts enjoy Mumm Champagne in space!
We also learn that Mumm rhymes with room, not mom. Maison Mumm employs a thousand seasonal workers to harvest their 216 hectares of grapes by hand. The grapes are carefully picked and then pressed on site in the vineyards to ensure the juice is of the highest quality. These enormous oak barrels are no longer used in producing champagne. 
For a time champagne was fermented in concrete vats that are lined with white tiles. The tag on the front of each vat shows how many litres each vat held…6,850 litres in this one! 
We descend 40 meters to the galleries where the champagne is stored to mature. Notice the black mold! I am shocked to see that there is black mold everywhere. Our guide explains that the people who work in this area get ‘danger pay’. She says there is no way to control the mold growth!
Maison Mumm has 25 km of galleries that took 58 years to build. These galleries are carved out of the natural chalk stone. There are over 150 kms of these galleries under the city of Reims. Reims will never have an underground metro system because of all the tunnels beneath the city. The champagne is stored in racks to allow the sediment to settle in the neck of the bottle. The bottles need to be turned a quarter turn approximately 25 times over a period of six weeks. Today this process is mechanized but there are certain champagnes that are still turned by hand. There are two workers who still do this and they can each turn 50,000 bottles a day!
We walk through a maze of gallery after gallery where we see thousands of bottles of champagne maturing in smaller side galleries. 
Maison Mumm buys 8 million wine bottles a year but our guide is not allowed to tell us how many bottles are stored here. It is hard to imagine millions of bottles of champagne maturing in these galleries, and this is only one of nine Champagne houses in Riems. A Google search reveals that here are over 200 million bottles of champagne below the city of Reims! 
During WWI the citizens of Reims sheltered in these galleries as their city was bombed repeatedly. They made schools, hospitals, sleeping quarters, living for years in these galleries. In places there are reminders of this time scratched into the gallery walls.
One of the galleries is locked as it stores the most expensive, rare bottles of champagne.
After many years the champagne loses its bubbles but it then turns into a very fine, very expensive bottle of wine.
The longest gallery is named the Champs-Élysées. It stretches as far as we can see in both directions!
This map of one small part of the galleries shows how the galleries are arranged. At the beginning of our tour our guide told us not to fall behind as she didn’t want to lose anyone down here! 
There is a museum down here with some of the equipment that has been used over the years in the production of champagne…and more mold! I would not want to spend very long down in these galleries.
Champagne is sold in many different sized bottles, from the smallest which is 1/4 of a standard bottle to the 9 litre Salmanzar pictured here. But they also have even larger bottles. The Nebuchadnezzar holds the equivalent of 20 standard bottles and serves 120! 
After our tour we have a tasting and toast. Our French holiday celebrates a milestone anniversary.
After our Mumm tour we walk to the Musée de la Reddition, or the Museum of the Surrender. This museum in Reims commemorates the end of World War II in Europe. It is located at the actual site of the surrender, which took place at a red brick school just northwest of the train station, now named the Lycée Roosevelt. This was the location of the Allied Command Center of General Dwight Eisenhower. 
At 2:41 am on Monday, May 7, 1945, officers of both sides signed a declaration of unconditional surrender, ending World War Two in Europe. I am amazed to see that this is a very short simply worded document…and wonder what such a document would look like if signed today.
The signing took place in the headquarters’ Map Room which has been preserved as it was at the time. The walls are covered in war maps and statistics, and the table at which the generals and admirals sat for the signing are exactly as they were on May 7, 1945.
There is a photo of those present at the signing of this document and their nameplates are still on the chairs they sat. Other rooms hold exhibits of uniforms, press reports and war artifacts. There was also a very informative film which we both found interesting.
This is a view of the nearby train station which we see on our way to catch the metro home.
Stay At Home Day
Day 78, Tuesday November 14, 2023
Today is rainy and cold, a good day to stay home, rest up a bit, get some groceries and do a bit of planning for the rest of our trip. We are both still a bit low energy after our bout with Covid.
We flew to Calgary in a Dreamliner. It is a huge plane that holds 320 passengers and the plane was full.
Our Airbnb host met us at the apartment yesterday and he had a little box of six macarons and a jar of his own honey for us as an anniversary gift for us. He only spoke French but we were able to communicate without any problem…after two and half months in France I am feeling more comfortable speaking French.
It is cold and rainy outside and we are both quite happy to stay home today. Bob seems to have recovered quite quickly from his Covid but it is taking me me a bit longer. I work on the blog while Bob does laundry and researches what we will be doing in Reims.
We are both tired and thankful that we our Reims Airbnb host is letting us check in early.
This fabulous Art Nouveau building was built in 1907. It reminds me of some of the buildings we saw in Barcelona.
A 15th Century painting of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, the swords are symbols of the sorrow she endured while witnessing her son’s crucifixion.
The Notre Dame church of Dijon is just around the corner from our apartment. The interior has beautiful stained glass…
I go home to rest and Bob goes out to explore a bit more. Dijon is a very pretty city, very walkable and our apartment is only a block away from the old town. I hope I feel well enough to be able to see more of it.
trudymason.com 