Marne

CHAMPAGNE. A name associated with luxury, well-being and perhaps a hint of decadence. A visit to Marne can provide an invigorating tonic in lots of ways. My route from Ardennes into Marne was by way of the Argonne, a predominantly forested ridge that separates Champagne- Ardenne from the neighbouring region of Lorraine. Approaching it from Ardennes on the northern end was just like entering a tunnel. Travelling from the rather intimate and rolling countryside of Ardennes I emerged, blinking into the sweeping, chalky plains of Champagne.

You can imagine that a ridge separating Lorraine from the rest of France has great strategic importance and during the First World War it was the scene of some of the most bitter fighting. For four years the Argonne was the front line in the Meuse- Argonne Offensive and the area has many sad reminders of this terrible conflict. The Argonne however, is not all forested. There are clearings for farms and villages dotted amongst the trees and as I surveyed the scene on a bright and sunny first day of May, I was struck by the incongruity of such a lovely rural landscape and the horrors of WW1. As well as the many battles that have taken place here, one little town in the Argonne has a particular and unusual claim to fame. On the night of 21-22 June 1791 Varennes-en-Argonne was pivotal in the course of French - and indeed - European history, for it was here that Louis XVI was arrested with his family during his night-time dash for freedom after being spotted by the vigilant villagers of this little town. It is a charming and relatively unknown corner of the Marne department but the tourist authorities as well as private enterprise are now recognising the fact and there are several initiatives to develop the Argonne as a tourist destination, including Le Tulipier, a brand new hotel tucked away in the forest at Vienne-le-Chateau.

The route to my first overnight stay took me past a basilica that has what I have always considered as one of the most beautiful faqades in provincial France. The aptly-named Flamboyant-Gothic style of the west front of this church that is as large as some French cathedrals dominates the little town, 8km (5 miles) from the capital of the Marne department, Chalons-en-Champagne (mystifyingly, also still referred to - even on signposts - as Chalons-sur-Marne). It has UNESCO World Heritage Site status courtesy of its place on the route of Saint Jacques de Compostelle and is well worth a detour if you have an interest in these things and why not combine it with a lunch and or dinner and overnight stay at the excellent Aux Armes de Champagne which is just opposite. I remember enjoying one of the best - and certainly one of the longest - lunches I have ever enjoyed in France at this unexpectedly-located gastronomic haven! After a drive across the countryside south of Epernay, I arrived in a part of the Marne which is dominated by rivers - and not just any old rivers. There are a number of minor ruisseau and fleuves (streams and tributaries) that flow close to Saint-Just-Sauvage, the village also stands close to the confluence of two of France's major rivers, the Seine and the Aube. The very water mill which was to be 'home' for the next eighteen hours was itself on a small man-made diversion of the Seine - and what a lovely spot and convivial atmosphere I found there.. I should first admit I am not a fisherman. Never have been, never will be. But such was the enthusiasm of the English-speaking mill's owner Laurent Labat, the quality of the accommodation, the excellence of the food and the beauty of the location that it became one of the high spots of my springtime trip. For a British angler, this spot must be near to paradise, with its nine miles of private water, full of trout, pike, zander, perch, black bass - all just waiting to be caught. Having said that, I spent a lovely Sunday morning sharing a boat with an expert angler and I caught nothing. My expert did - which just goes to prove I suppose that there is more to this fishing business than meets the eye! The Moulin de Sauvage is managed by Laurent Labat on a very ecological basis. As well as careful management of the fish stocks for example, it generates a lot of its own electricity at the mill, selling any surplus to the French National Grid. It also offers the possibility of a variety of excursions for nonfishing partners.

I have never pretended to be a fluent French-speaker and certain words are no-go areas for me in their spoken form. I raise this now, as I was to spend my Sunday afternoon in two villages whose names I can write with consummate ease despite the further complication that one of them begins with a diphthong, but when it came to asking directions for them, got me precisely nowhere! CEuilly and Reuil, it turned out, lie next to each other on the southern slopes of the Marne valley, just west of Epernay, right in the heart of champagne country. The unpronounceable CEuilly is home to not one, or even two but three museums, which is one per 200 head of population. They are all a good place to begin to discover the World of Champagne. Two of the museums are in fact 'recreations' - one, a typical wine-grower's house, the other of a school of the region at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries. The third museum is a distillery museum In the heart of the champagne vineyards, the museums, whilst small in scale, have an enthusiastic curator and are both charming and give an insight into conditions in times
past.

In neighbouring Reuil, at a cosy chambres d'hotes on a champagne vineyard, I found something very unexpected in a cellar of a cha'mpagne producer. Not thousands of bottles but a charming and huge display of santons (miniature figures, usually found in Provence) portraying nineteenth-century champagne village life through all four seasons.
After a stroll along the banks of the Marne at Mareuil on a crisp May morning, drove into Epernay, not to one of the big champagne houses on the Avenue de Champagne but to a producer a little tucked away from the centre but nevertheless, as discovered during a tasting at the end of my unusual visit, a producer of very fine champagnes.

What was to make my visit unusual was that I needed a few minutes training by a speleologist before I visited their cellars, Rather than take the boring old lift (!), I was to descend into their cave by means of a 30 metre (100 feet!) shaft in full abseiling kit! If I look a little apprehensive in the accompanying photo - I was! (Descents by the shaft can only be made by prior appointment).

Whilst at Champagne Leclerc-Briant, bumped into the Pascal Leclerc-Briant, a descendant of the founder Lucien who began producing champagne in 1872. The present owner has opened an interesting museum in their rue Chaude Ruelle premises devoted to old tools involved in champagne production.

After a splendid lunch with lots of loca specialities at the atmospheric La Cave a Champagne in the rue Gambetta, Epernay (tel: 00 33 (0)3 26 55 50 70), I spent the afternoon driving through the champagne vineyards, an altogether agreeable experience, the sun popping in and out from behind the clouds I revisited the 'lighthouse' at Verzenay (tel: 00 33 (0)3 26 07 87 87, http://www.lepharedevezenay.com/), which sits 'in' an escarpment on the top of the Montagne de Reims, another very imaginative museum which tells the history of champagne. It has a very good audio-visual show (available with an English soundtrack) which graphically demonstrates what makes the landscape so perfect for the production of champagne. My afternoon ended at somewhere completely new to me and virtually next door to Le Phare de Verzenay - and it really caught my imagination. Les Faux de Verzy is a very curious place. I followed the signs through the trees out of the village of Verzy in my car, until the road turned into a track. I parked my car and set off through the trees on foot. After about ten minutes a sign announced that I had arrived.

Where had I arrived? In what I can only describe as a haunted wood of grotesquely deformed beech trees, with branches so contorted that they seemed to be writhing in agony. It was dull, damp, silent - and I was alone. I felt that I had stumbled into the Grimm world of Hansel and GreteL.very strange!

At the end of my springtime jaunt in the Ardennes and the Marne which had been spent staying in lovely but modestly-priced accommodation and eating in veryaffordable restaurants, I found myself in Reims, ending on a high note in two of the towns most celebrated establishments. As I said at the outset, real Champagne - that is the white sparkling wine made in the Champagne region, whatever the name on the bottle - is a prestige name associated with luxury and well-being. But, as with everything else in life, there are degrees of prestige.

Visiting smaller producers - and there was still some of that to do in the autumn leg of my visit,
perhaps you get closer to the personal passion of those involved in its production but nevertheless, I would always recommend that this special world is seen in the context of a visit to the house of one of the great names of Champagne. Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin is without doubt one such name. Most people have their favourite brand, sometimes a name unfamiliar to the rest of us, being the product of a small specialist producer, but those who know about such things generally acknowledge that Veuve Clicquot is in the top echelon of the world's best champagnes. The story of the young Widow Clicquot (nee Ponsardin) taking over her late husband's business in 1805 at the age of 27 is a remarkable one. Although the business already had a thriving export trade in Russia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Holland and England, she greatly developed the business, which now exports 85 per cent of its production to more than 1 50 countries. The company, now owned by the Louis-Vuitton- Moet-Hennessy Group, produces a range of prestige champagnes from vines in the best areas of the region in the time-honoured tradition, which then mature in their vast network of caves deep under the streets of Reims (hewn out of the limestone by the Romans).

If there were a perfect way to end a visit to France, it would be with a wonderful meal. And thus it was, at the end of the first leg of my visit to the Champagne-Ardenne region.
There are times when we should throw caution to the wind and - almost regardless of cost - treat ourselves to something really special. This usually translates into a very special meal in France, where it doesn't usually require you to remortgage your house to eat well.

Literally just round the corner from the Widow Clicquot's domain is Chateau Les Crayeres restaurant housed in a lovely Art Nouveau building set in seven hectares of gardens on the outskirts of the town centre. You'll gather it's something rather special when I tell you the wine list runs to a handsome forty-eight pages - with fifteen of them devoted to champagnes. As I sat in the elegant fin-de-dixneuvieme- siecle conservatory with my aperitif (champagne, of course), rain was cascading down outside and I reflected on the fact that 'a good meal' is not just about food; it's about ambience and service as well. The rain added to the feeling of cosiness and the waiters struck exactly the right balance between attentiveness and discretion whilst I wrestled with the choices that the menu presented. I took the millefeuille de truffes et Saint-Jacques as an entree at €39 (rather than the fresh caviar at €115!) and the pigeonneau roti at €53. The meal may have cost £64, plus a little more for the aperitif and the glass of wine with my meal, but it was worth every penny.