I posted recently (link) about a trip to Champagne to tour some of the world’s most beloved Champagne Houses. Day 1 began with Mumm champagne, learning about how to make this sparkling wine, and ended in a feast inside an ancient windmill. This post covers day 2 and a trip to one of my favourite champagnes: Perrier-Jouet.
Sadly, Perrier-Jouet don’t offer cellar tours to the public and so, as we rolled up in our taxis bright and early to the Chateau, I felt incredibly lucky to have been offered a private one. It’s such a shame because it really is one of the most beautiful alcohol producing centres (including whisky distilleries) that I’ve been to! Think gleaming white courtyards, high ceilinged libraries-cum-tasting rooms and a whole lot of art.
This latter point is absolutely key to Perrier-Jouet’s identity – since 1811 when the brand was founded by Pierre-Nicolas Perrier and his wife, Rose-Adelaide Jouet, it has identified itself with art and nature. It is most famous for its links to art nouveau, immortalised in the iconic Belle Epoque bottle, designed in 1902 by famous artist Emile Galle, and has Europe’s largest collection of art nouveau stored in its private guest house opposite the chateau.
Even the working cellars where the champagne is stored to age are packed with works of art. I turned a corner from some racks of aging blanc de blancs and was met with this fabulous piece below called Lost Time by Glithero! With the estate remaining closed to the public, you wonder who this beauty is all for. Perhaps the aging bottles themselves…
…Anyway- rewind and regress up a few floors to our initial arrival to the house; we were ushered straight form our taxis and into a room for a tutored tasting of the Perrier-Jouet wines. It was 10am, but being the consummate professional I didn’t let that discourage me and quaffed away. In fact, me and Niamh (Eat Like A Girl) were the only people who spurned our spitoons and slurped the whole lot. With product as fine as Perrier-Jouet, it was hard not to.
The house style is light and floral, crystal clean but with a milder whack of citrus than Mumm perhaps. It’s dry – naturally; it was the first house to produce dry champagnes in 1846 and primarily to please its English clientele! It’s very feminine and elegant and…I adore it. We learned that their signature grape is chardonnay and they pride themselves on the quality of these vineyards particuarly. We tasted our way through a host of still wines that are used to blend the final champagnes, before moving onto the range of champagnes themselves.
Following this, we headed down 20 meters into the ground to tour the cellars where Perrier-Jouet comes to life. Here the ground is made up of very porous chalk, making the air extremely humid – up to 80% humidity in fact. You can see little rivulets of moisture pooling on the walls and it’s just this that makes it the perfect location for ageing this product. We toured the winding underground avenues, passing innumerous rows of bottles and the odd artistic surprise, peering upon bottles old (up to 1805) and new (from last year’s harvest) and learning their stories.
Leaving behind the wet and shadowy caverns, we moved upstairs, eager for two things: light and by this point….lunch. I mentioned earlier that Perrier-Jouet identifies itself with art and nature and for lunch they wanted to showcase their mastery over both with a specially themed menu and, d’accord, paired champagnes.
We began with a trio of amuse bouche, including fresh sea urchin, and paired with the beautiful Belle Epoque Blanc de Blancs 2002. This is a rare champagne, produced in limited quantity, and tasting of flowers, grapefruit and delicate little expressions of ginger. It’s incredibly special and at £300 a bottle, is a true luxury.
Starters brought us the most visual declaration of art: a dish of lobster, cucumber gel and citrus, plated 
intricately into the hallmark Perriet-Jouet, white Japanese anemone flower. Paired with their Grand Brut, this dish captured the Perrier-Jouet spirit: nature, transformed into art.
Mains presented a light dish of turbot with julienned vegetables, with the Belle Epoque 2007, fresh with white peach and that signature citrus.
Finally, a dessert of coconut with fruits, simple and refreshing, paired eloquently with a rose 2006 Belle Epoque, beaming strawberry, raspberry, intoxicating to the nose.
This was a fabulous meal, as was my entire visit to Perrier-Jouet and so it ended; sweet and sad.
There’s something inspiring about being in this part of the world; the epicentre to a drink so famed, so romantic that it crowns the toast at all the celebrations of our lives, from births, to weddings. If you had to pin point a precise area in Champagne too where this emotion is most tangible, it would be here: the Avenue du Champagne, lined grandly with all the main champagne houses and home to Perrier-Jouet. I loved this brand before – how could you not? It is the most beautiful bottle in the world after all. Yet visiting the site firsthand solidified this and brought it to life. Perrier-Jouet: champagne begun as a love story, transformed from nature into art…Oh, how I love it.
http://www.perrier-jouet.com
28 Avenue de Champagne, 51200 Épernay, France
