Dateline France, 14 August 1990 Report 26 There's been a bit of a hiatus in my reports, because I've returned to the US, had to unpack at home, unpack at school, pick berries, do taxes... Anyway, I am now getting organized enough to have a few extra minutes at the edges of the day, and I hope to get the last of our adventures written up. First, regarding my remark that the Montparnasse tower is a better place to see Paris than the Eiffel Tower. One of my French readers informs me that it is better than any other place to see Paris, as it is the only location where you don't see the Montparnasse tower marring the skyline. Second, some more opinions on why the French don't have a lot of private shrinks: >p.s. re dearth of french shrinks, or dearth of use thereof. >interesting question about which I'd also wondered. How about these? >(many were on your list, but i don't recall your list exactly.) > >- (healthy) french skepticism of quick cures >- widespread availability of extended vacations > (a month of rest will do wonders) >- social/cultural acceptance of a relatively wide range of personalities > (we say here we accept eccentrics, but I think we really accept > only certain kind of eccentricities) >- social/cultural attitude of "je m'en fiche" (don't give a damn) > so people don't worry so much about what others think >- general practitioners ability to recommend (reimbursed) "cures". > again, just plain rest can do a lot. >- acceptance of having "fais une crise nerveuse" >- stable society, i.e., people really don't move around much, or very far. > they are often around friends they grew up with, or went to school with > they often take vacations with extended families > don't change jobs often > jobs seem to accept wide range of performance, w/o stress of reprisal > companies don't go out of business as often > - else govt takes them over. > etc. >- better social services (less stress about where next meal is coming from, > how to find day care, etc.) >- the food is great Now, on to our trip west from Paris. Can you fill in the missing elements in this sequence: ________, split, medium, bottle, magnum, jeroboam, -------, methusalah, salmanazar, _________, nebuchadnezzar. (Excuse the spelling, it's a French-English hybrid in places.) They are names of sizes of wine bottles, ranging from 9.4 cl to 15 liters. I learned all about them on our visits to Epernay and Rhiems in the center of the Champagne region. We did our visiting of cellars in Epernay, where our knowledge of and palate for Champagne were both enhanced. Champagne is made from 1 or more of the following varieties of grapes: Pinot Noir, Pinot Neunier and Chardonnay (all of which do pretty well in Oregon). It involves two fermentations, one in vats or barrels, one in the bottles. At the end of the bottle fermentation, a remueur (or riddler) turns and gradually tilts the bottles to work the sediment into the neck. A remueur is educated for three years, and a good one can turn 50,000 in a day. (Talk about carpal-tunnel syndrome!) After a couple weeks of riddling, the bottles are ready for degorgement, in which they are opened long enough to blow out the sediment and add a little sugar, then corked and wired. There is vintage champagne, but not every year--only when the vintners judge the quality of the grapes in a single year to be of sufficient quality. Most champagne contains wine from two or more years. The first cellar we visited was Castellane, which was our favorite. There is a museum there, and the tour was the most informative. It was the only one where we got to see the bottling lines (not running, because it was Saturday. Castellane is one of the few cellars left that uses wood barrels for their first fermentation. They seem to stick very closely to the old methods of production. Their building is very impressive, and they run a butterfly garden nearby. We were in a group with a half bus load of Japanese tourists, and we were amazed to see them wander off from the group and also pick up bottles out of the riddling racks. We also learned that the original reason for the foil on the top of champagne bottles was to hide the lost liquid from degorgement. Nowdays, they top off the bottles from another bottle from the same batch. Castellane makes the house champagne for Maxim's in Paris, and was our favorite of the ones we tried. The next cellar we visited was Moet et Chandon. (You pronounce the `t' in Moet, we found out.) This is by far the largest cellar, with 87 million bottles of champagne, which is something like a third or fourth of all in France. They have a nice statue of Dom Perignon out front, who is credited with perfecting the champagne-making process. They are also the only house that can use his name on their labels. This was the favorite cellar of Napoleon (they have one of his hats on display), and he would show up before major battles to stock up on champagne to celebrate with after. The chalk deposits are quite important to the region. The roots of the grape vines grow down into for meters, which keeps them from drying out in summer. It is also what all the cellars are carved in (some dating to Gallo-Roman times). The chalk helps keep the humidity in the right place in the cellars. There are kilometers of cellars under Epernay. One other thing that sets Moet apart is that they own most of their own vineyards, whereas the other cellars buy from grower cooperatives. The last cellar we visited was Mercier. They are owned by Moet now, and have always been showmen. In the lobby there is an enormous barrel (easily 4 meters high on its side) with wheels that was filled with champagne and hauled to the 1889 exposition in Paris. The tour starts with a 10 minute, multimedia, laser and smoke commercial. Then you get hauled around the cellars in a little train. There is a lot of sculpture on the cellar walls. When Mercier was alive, he used to take important guests through the cellars in a coach drawn by four white horses. We stopped in to see the wine and anthropology museum. We were the only ones there. The anthropology collection was good, but the building was in need of repair. Across the street from our hotel an agricultural fair was in progress, which we visited. Lots of vine and wine equipment on display. Bottling machines, bottle washers, labelers, corkers, muzzlers (the wire on top of the cork), cappers & decappers (during the second fermentation, the bottles have a metal bottle cap on them, like a soda bottle, with a plastic plug underneath), bulk riddling machines, robots to unload pallets of bottles, disgorgers and my favorite, a "cork orienter". That machine takes bulk corks and gets them all facing the same direction. It's not as easy as you think, because the characteristic mushroom shape of a champagne cork only comes from being in the bottle--it's almost a cylinder when it goes in. I tried some of the local "marc" while I was there. It is a distilled spirit, somewhere between brandy and shellac. The area around Epernay was badly beaten up during WWI; the Battle of the Marne was in the region. From Epernay we went to Reims (or Rheims) (pronounced something like "Rhez"). There is also a lot of champagne made there, but we didn't visit any cellars. We saw the church of St. Jacques, built in the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries. It contains some of the earliest examples of gothic architecture. Of course, the masterpiece of the city is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which is similar from the front to the cathedral by the same name in Paris. This one has a lot of sculpture all over the outside, and also covering the facade wall on the interior side. It was badly shelled in WWI, and little of the original stained glass remains. There are some new windows, the most notable by Marc Chagall in 1974. It is an early gothic cathedral, constructed mainly between 1211 and 1275, which was after Chartres. While we were there, a small choral group was singing in one of the aisles. As near as I can figure, it was an impromptu concert by a group of people on a tour (but who obviously practice together). The cathedral was supposed to have a bunch of spires over the transept, but damage caused by a fire in 1481 prevented it. In that fire the roof burned off. We later saw gargoyles dripping lead out of their mouths, which had drained through them like rainwater, when the lead sheathing on the roof melted. The cathedral was the site of the coronation of 25 French kings, Charles X being the most recent. Whenever this happened, much additional ornamentation and seating galleries were temporarily added inside. It was here that Joan of Arc saw Charles VII crowned king. (From there, things kind of went downhill for Joan.) I've already covered her beginnings in the Loire valley, and her demise in Rouen. Someday I hope to get to Orleans to complete the story. Next to the cathedral is the Tau Palace, so called for its T shape. It is now a museum, featuring many of the statues that have been replaced on the exterior of the cathedral, tapestries, and the church treasury. The treasury includes the Talisman of Charlemagne, part of which is said to have been brought to him by a dove. There are also many of the robes and costumes from the coronation of Charles X (1824). In the courtyard of the palace were stone pieces being used for repairs of the cathedral, and pieces that had been removed to act as models. Other things we saw in town were a 3rd century Roman triumphal arch, a 2-deck merry-go-round, and a large, meshwork "egg", with lights at each intersection point, which turned on and off in ever-changing patterns. The final stop on the trip was the village of Laon, which took us north into Picardie. The old part of town is surrounded by ramparts on a bluff. From up there we could see for miles. There is a cathedral from 1160, with a remarkable nave. Off to one side of the transept is a statue of St. Theresa. Supplicants have written their requests on the wall next to it, and in some cases on the statue itself. A typical request was to get into the right college. ---------- The missing elements in the list of bottle sizes are huitieme, rehoboam and balthazar. We saw examples of them all.