- Left Hilo on the eve of Valentine's.
- Flew to Los Angeles and had a long stopover, so he caught a cab to play poker at a casino for seven hours.
- Left LAX on Swiss Air to Zurich, then backtracked to Paris, where he arrived around 6PM.
- Caught a taxi to our hotel, but the Yellow Vest protests closed the roads to our hotel.
- Here is his nightmare, which was unfortunately real:
- He couldn't find our hotel. Went into a bar for a drink, and no one there heard of the Renaissance Vendome.
- Asked policemen, hotels....everyone, and no help.
- His phone was running out of juice, and the internet did not work.
- His phone was not international, so he couldn't call us.
- Not sure if he couldn't find the number of the Renaissance, but only texted message to us seeking help. Never saw it.
- Stopped at a Starbuck's to charge up his phone.
- Kept texting Tom, our fourth member, who was still back in Hilo, for help. There was encouragement, but nothing much else.
- More than four hours after arrival, as he was about to return to Charles de Gaulle Airport to find a hotel--note that he has been traveling for two days--he bumped into a French couple, who kindly walked him to our hotel.
- He saw homeless sleeping in doorways around our hotel. He should have been mugged.
- We opened a bottle of Champagne on his arrival and he drank most of it.
Frankly, he was lucky to not have been robbed, for he was wheeling his suitcase and must have looked like a Japanese tourist walking up and down the streets of Paris at night.
From that introduction to his first visit to Europe, France and Paris, Sunday went perfectly, for we caught the French bullet train, the TGV by SCNG from the East Gate (there are seven major trains stations in Paris) to Rheims, which is pronounced something like Lrrraim. Don't mention the s. We were so fortunate for two reasons. My Blue-Bar Pigeon showed us where to go, and a really helpful youthful traveler helped us get our tickets using a vending machine.
The ride was wonderful, and here are just two views:
Lot of contrails in the sky here. I was particularly worried about our luggage, and brought one of those high tech bicycle cables to tie our suitcase together.
First class seats cost around $40, and, non-stop, it only took 45 minutes, for, like the Shinkansen, this TGV moves along at 200 MPH. We arrived and the sense of imminent doom I had in Paris disappeared. Rheims has a cute boutique downtown, and everything is in walking distance.
We are staying at the Hotel Cecyl, and okay place for $80/night. It was only a five-minute walk.
Notice that La Gloria statue at the end of road. It will keep coming back. This is in the heart of Rheims, founded in 80 BC.
The Romans came soon thereafter. Wines were grown in the Middle Ages, and champagne was invented in the 16th century. There is now a population close to 200,000
We asked for the best lunch place, and the person who checked us in recommended Cote' Cuisine for Elvis' first meal here. We ordered a Roederer Champagne and first came a French appetizer plate. I ordered a steak and got what I should have expected: overly sauced and barely edible.
However, the taste was exceptional. Elvis ordered rabbit and steak tartare, the first time he ever had either of them. By now he had almost recovered from his ordeal.
A few hours later, Tom arrived, so we accompanied him to an early dinner and shared his meal. He is the optical engineer for those telescopes on Mauna Kea.
Elvis, is the liquor buyer for KTA on the Big Island, He said that Verve Cliquot was one of the more popular champagnes on the island.
Elvis and Tom with our final eating session of the day at Restaurant L'Apostrophe. And Elvis is not named after that singer.
More of the Smiling Angel statue in Erlon Square. It was very badly damaged in World War I.
So, all that to set the tone for our Champagne-tasting experience tomorrow, for who can forget Leslie Caron singing The Night They Invented Champagne. And, of course, Tiny Bubbles, by Don Ho,
I wrote about champagne more than six years ago. Now I have a chance to go champagne-tasting in France. Our first stop will be to Taittinger.
The best selling champagne in the world is Moet & Chandon. This is the first champagne created to be enjoyed over ice. At one time, this is where we were headed, but a change of plans upgraded our visit to Tattinger, best seller #6. Tattinger sells for $47 in Bev Mo, while Moet only goes for $32 there. I happen to have in my wine "cellar" a Veuve Cliquot, rated #2 and priced at $34 in Bev Mo. You would thus be expected to be charged $150 for Tattinger and $100 for Moet or Veuve Cliquot in a restaurant.
Dom Perignon from Moet Chandon? $170. Champagne of famous actors and rappers, Cristal from Roederer? $270.
Did Monk Dom Perignon invent campagne? Nope, for in 1531 Benedictine Monks were the creators. DP was not born until 1638. He was placed in charge of eliminating bubbles from fermenting bottles. Until the 20th century, only royalty drank champagne.
My link with Benedictine Monks is that my eating club at Stanford won an annual campus singing contest by dressing as they did, with hair shirts (the most uncomfortable attire I've ever worn) and nailing a Gregorian Chant. Here is the best selling CD of the Santo Domingo de Silos Benedictine Monks, and that's how we looked. However, we performed a decade before their CD was released.
There are more than 100 Champagne houses and 19,000 grape producers in the region. Those capital letters, like NM and CM, tell you what combination of producer/grower/distributor is involved. The sweetness scale:
- Brut Nature (less than 3 grams of residual sugar per liter)
- Extra Brut (less than 6 grams)
- Brut (less than 1 grams)
- Extra Dry (12-17 grams)
- Sec (17-32 grams)
- Dem-sec (32-50 grams)
- Doux (50 grams)
Got that? Extra Brut is really dry, Extra Dry is medium sweetness, Sec is sweet and Doux is really sweet.
They come in a variety of bottle sizes: demi (0.375 liters), standard (0.75 l), magnum (1.5 l), jeroboam (3 l for champagne or 4.5 l for wines), Methuselah (6 l), and Nubuchadnezzar (15 l), with the largest, Melchizedek or Midas, which holds 30 liters. 
Here to the right, Hofit Golan hoisting a Midas of Armand de Brignac Champagne. 
Note that a fifth means a fifth of a gallon, or 25.6 fluid ounces or 0.757 liters, the size of an American bottle of wine or champagne. To the left, equivalent alcoholic drinks.
The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans define moderation as up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men—and only by adults of legal drinking age. According to the Dietary Guidelines, a drink-equivalent is defined as 1.5 fluid ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits (40 percent alcohol) such as rum, vodka, gin and whiskey; 12 fluid ounces of regular beer (5 percent alcohol); or 5 fluid ounces of wine (12 percent alcohol). Each standard drink-equivalent contains 14 grams of alcohol. The Distilled Spirits Council always has urged adults who choose to drink to do so responsibly and in moderation following the U.S. Dietary Guidelines.
Or to summarize, two 5-ounce glasses of wine/day for males and one for females.
What grapes are used for champagne? Mostly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but also Pinot Meunier and a range of others. Why isn't the Pinot Noir champagne reddish or pink? The skin barely comes in contact with the process. However, I found a German sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir that was blood red and bubbly. I was part of a company that got the U.S. rights to sell it in the U.S. We went bankrupt. A quote from that posting:
Can you imagine the market for this elixir in China? I await the day when I can watch my Hawaiian sunset over a flute of this bubbly, smoking a Churchill cigar that smells like pipe tobacco, sipping a cup of coffee that tastes like coffee. None of this exists today.
There are only two places in the world where the term champagne can be used: France and California. Why? California winemakers have been producing sparkling wines since the Civil War days. Reims and Epernay came before them, but were devastated by World War I. The Treaty of Versailles brought an end to that war, but inserted was a loophole that allowed for California champagne. No other state can use the term.
It gets a bit more complicated than that, for the U.S. Senate never ratified that treaty. Note that they almost never ratify anything. The Law of Sea Treaty, which was close to being approved by the Senate when I worked there in the 1980 period, has still not been ratified. Anyway, the French champagne makers were not particularly concerned because Prohibition was soon to put California champagne-makers out of commission.
American wines floundered and did not recover until the 70's. Carlo Rossi's Hearty Burgundy became popular, but this is a Zinfandel-based blend, not Pinot Noir, and was my wife's favorite wine, where a gallon today can be bought for $10. Then? Almost free, for it came in gallon jug with that loop to hold it. Giving credit to Pearl, she favored the Gallo version, and to quote:
Soon after the release of Hearty Burgundy 50 years ago, Los Angeles Times wine columnist Robert Lawrence Balzer (who died at age 99 in December 2011) called Gallo Hearty Burgundy "the best red wine value in the country today."
The preferred Gallo size today is 1.5 liters for as low as $7.
Finally in 2006 the European Union reached an agreement with the U.S. for easing trade wine trade restrictions, allowing the use of terms like California Champagne, Chablis and Sherry which at that time sold with those attributions.
Andre Extra Dry California Champagne not too long ago went for $3.50 at Long's, and now sells for $5.50 at selected liquor outlets. I had an uncle who drank half a bottle of Andre every day. Other noted sparkling wines are cava from Spain and prosecco from Italy, generally available from $7 to $15 in supermarkets.
Well, return for our visit to Taittinger on Monday, February 18.
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