I am still recovering from an epic trip to Champagne, only a portion of which I still remember.  The Ruinart team hooked us up big time!  There is no way that the experience and knowledge that we garnered as Ruinart guests could come from textbooks and web sites. What I found so striking and what will endure for me is the way that Ruinart accommodated us.   They took a page out of the hospitality book; they got into our heads to figure, what would WE as sommeliers  value.  Don’t get me wrong, an all expenses paid trip to Champagne would have been awesome under any circumstances but THIS trip was so much more than that.  The Ruinart team got it just right.  They treated us in the manner of a great sommelier.  The Ruinart team, greeted us, empathized with us, evaluated their audience, and provided an experience so much greater than the sum of its parts.  Here are some examples.

We read about the caves carved deep into the Champagne sub-soil and if you are like me, you register it and then move on.  Some of us may even know that these Crayères have been registered with UNESCO as a world heritage site and harbored WWII refugees but nothing could prepare you for the sensation of descending into these damp dungeon like caves, hundreds of feet below the earth, crudely carved out hundreds of years ago before diesel powered tools and such.  Electricity hadn’t even been invented yet so you could see remnants of sconces carved into the chalk.  Even with the 100 degree heat outdoors, within several feet, the temperature naturally dropped to a cool and perfect cellar temperature.  What a respite! Even to touch the walls and experience the cool dampness transcended everything I had previously read.  It just helps you to “get it”,

Naturally, every meal included Ruinart, and served from a jeroboam whenever possible.  Frédéric Panaïotis, took it a step further.  While he obviously favors the style of Champagne that he himself crafts, and formerly crafted for Veuve Cliquot, he is a formidable taster and extremely well versed in all of the world’s wines.  He is involved with blind tasting himself; in fact, he leads a group, and if his stories are true, sadistically and ruthlessly. There were three main exercises that were arranged for us; the first was a tasting of the base wines prior to their second fermentation.  Tasting these wines still with no reduction or autolysis really allowed us to be able to dissect and deconstruct, the materiel that would one day be Ruinart Champagne.  This was followed by tasting the Blanc de Blanc and Rose Ruinarts going back 25 years or so.  The best in my opinion was a tasting of Blanc de Blancs from throughout Champagne. It read like a page out of the Tete de Cuvees that we study for exams. It was incredibly illustrative to test our preconceived notions on Houses and vintages that we expected to be best and the ones we actually found best.  The proof was in the flute. Eerie to watch Frédéric name them all blind – that man can taste.  The final tasting was one that Frédéric arranged at the Michelin starred Ambassadeur in Paris in concert with David, the runner-up in the Meilleur Sommelier du Monde.   David took us through an elaborate tasting menu with some very obscure but correct wines that I can only hope the Court does not entertain to add to our possible wines unless just to swallow and enjoy.

Every meal was selected with care at the gamut of genres.  There were Michelin starred restaurants with award winning sommeliers, there were al fresco restaurants with chefs who in Gallic stubbornness returned their Michelin stars to earn them back themselves; there were bustling cafes where WE were generously offered to select our wines as well as the perfectly selected picnic venue with magnums of Ruinart miraculously whisked in a la minute.  I don’t know what Rachel did to ONLY gain 5 pounds.

Charlotte Duntze was instrumental in our trip; in fact, she choreographed it.  She masterfully combined just the rights amounts of food, wine, culture, education, fun, activities and free time.  Julie Murez , from Maison Ruinart charmed all of us with her help and navigation around Reims and Shellley Turner from the States was also instrumental in this trip. 

On the educational front, we were taken to the CIVC, that notorious governmental organization that we memorize factoids about. As an acronymned governmental body, I can’t say I entirely relished the prospect of the visit but I was wrong.  Most of us were feeling varying amounts jetlag and afternoon Ruinart buzz; in fact, I have photographic evidence  of sleeping seated sommeliers with drool soaked lapels but getting out in the fields was the reveille we needed to snap out of it. Like many of us,  I have the flashcard that Taille Chablis and Cordon de Royat are the predominant training methods for Champagne but it sure was cooler and sure will stay with me longer now that I could touch and see them.  The extra insulatory wood and low training suddenly makes you get not just the what’s, but the why’s. Amazing to see the garbage and blue plastic littered fields that I had heard of as well, a remnant of Parisian land fill. As a bureaucracy, I expected the CIVC to be reactionary and self-serving but I was amazed at how proactive this organization is.  Up on the Plume de Coq Hill, on a sliver of unclassified land grew experimental grapes with experimental training  and irrigation methods should global warming necessitate changes to this most regulated wine region of the world. The best part of being up here though was to be able to look one way to the Gruet Hill of Clos de Goisses and imagine WWI battles raging there while if we pivoted the other way, we could glimpse the silhouettes of the grand cathedrals of Epernay.  A great vantage point.

I am missing so much.  Just having sommeliers flown in from all corners of the US, and the esprit de corps for our profession was amazing.  But as I alluded to earlier,  the whole trip was carried as a great sommelier would.  Ruinart and its team made a connection with us and ultimately provided us with an experience far greater than the sum of the individual components making up the trip. This trip was a gift that keeps on giving. Mille fois merci!!