OenoTourism & Wineries Wine & Food Matching Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh

Champagne

Written by Giles MacDonogh

Champagne

Posted: 1st May 2019

Back in the nineties I seemed to spend half my life padding around the Champagne region. I did pieces for the magazines, and occasionally I’d write about the wine in the FT. Latterly I used to put together the annual champagne supplements both for Decanter and (I think) the now defunct WINE. Sometimes my brief extended to gastronomy: what went well with champagne, or simply rounding up the best restaurants in the region. Even when I was not in Reims or Epernay specifically to look at food, I went to the top restaurants with my hosts from the various champagne houses, men and women with suitably robust expense accounts.

“In those days the top of the pyramid was Les Crayères, formerly the residence of the Pommery family who married into the princely Polignacs and where the chef Gérard Boyer had three stars for his predictably luxurious cooking. I must have eaten there at least once with Prince Alain de Polignac, who was born there and rose to become an exemplary chef des caves at Pommery. More to my taste was the rather more earthy style of the Grand Cerf at Montchenot on the Montagne de Reims. I had memorable meals at the Assiette Champenoise too. Now I see Les Crayères has lost Boyer and dropped down to two Michelin rosettes, Le Grand Cerf to one, while L’Assiette champenoise has rocketed up to three!”

On a more everyday level I also used to enjoy the buzz of art deco Brasserie du Boulingrin near the market, although various people have told me that the place has lost its spark of late. Epernay was never so good for restaurants, but La Briqueterie was more than a cut above the rest. It was the only one of my old haunts I visited when I returned to the region last week.

La Briqueterie’s Michelin star has migrated to Les Berceaux in Epernay now, but you still eat well. We had a rather autumnal dish of chicken medallions stuffed with chestnuts, wild mushrooms and an allegedly ‘perfect (poached) egg’, and then a pretty plate of gurnard (Bernard the gurnard) with chicory and oranges served with a rosé des Riceys from René Bauser. The best course was probably the chocolate tart with a cranberry and tarragon sorbet flanked by one of those ubiquitous pink biscuits that are a culinary speciality of Reims.

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Giles MacDonogh

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