Train Travel & Champagne - A Cautionary Tale

by Jo Eames

Of all the Calendar Reminders that can pop up on your BlackBerry, the one that says:  Monday 9.30am Eurostar to Champagne is probably the best.  Even when you're due to go with 6 Peach colleagues, 4 of whom are turning up at St Pancras direct from a stag weekend in a field in Devon...

Luckily, someone else (the wonderfully efficient and optimistic Karen Taylor from Liberty) is organising, and she has a late substitute up her sleeve in case one of our stags has rutted too hard.  But no, there they all are, good as gold, tucking into porridge in Le Pain Quotidien as if they've just had a couple of early nights in. The stamina of a true caterer never ceases to amaze me.

The train leaves on time after a painless check-in and somewhere outside Ashford Karen produces a magnum of La Cuvee from Devaux's D Collection. We don't mind if we do.  The Eurostar gains another point over air travel and we savour the champagne as we speed under the Channel towards the people who made it.

An attack of snoozing breaks out as we cross France and when the conductor says the train will be arriving in Troyes in "quelques minutes" we wake to see the platform already coasting up beside us.  There is a panicked grabbing of bags and then we are outside the station.  It's only when I look around and France is still a blur that I realise my glasses are still on the train.  First sign that travelling and champagne are not the perfect marriage.

Our hotel, the Maison Rhodes, is a fabulous half-timbered building typical of this lovely old-fashioned town and when Alistair Sawday says the rooms are "bona fide jaw-droppers" he speaks no word of a lie. Troyes is in the Cote des Bar, which specialises in pinot noir, naturally predominant in Devaux's champagnes as a result. Jean-Noel Girard of Devaux arrives to take us to dinner, with a selection of champagnes, starting with the Grande Reserve which is our house champagne at Peach - and the reason for the fact-finding tour.  Pate de foie gras and fig compote pairs very well with the soft raisiny fullness of the Blanc de Noirs. La Cuvee from the D range goes as well with food as it did with rushing scenery earlier.

We are quite at home in Troyes by the time we are collected for our tour of the winery, tasting and lunch the next day. All the champagnes bear out the quality of the operation and the insistence on reserving the best juice for the Devaux wines.  The Rose Intense and low dosage Ultra D (served before lunch with cheese gougeres) particularly stand out.

It's with sadness that we take the post-prandial Eurostar and head for Paris.  Somewhere between Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord I lose my bag.  (It turns up the next day in a shop - thanks Karen!)  I arrive home knowing a few more facts about champagne, but most pertinently, that if I'm going to drink it and travel at the same time I need to tie my belongings to myself first with string.