When in Champagne drink . . . Bordeaux

Thankfully escaping the worst of the weather in Britain we’re heading for the south of France but stopped yesterday in Champagne (also very wet and windy) to buy some champagne for a friend’s 50th birthday party. (At Gosset, since you ask . . . )

Lunch was at a solidly bourgeois family restaurant called La Grillade in Epernay where we were amused to see the locals all tucking into bottles of red Bordeaux with their grills. Amused not because I thought they should be drinking champagne but because whenever you go to a champagne dinner the Champenois endeavour to serve champagne with every course, including meat.

We thought we’d try something we didn’t know so well and ordered one of the local reds, an all-pinot noir Ay rouge from the Coteaux Champenois. It was pretty lean and austere but proved an excellent match for some delicious calves’ liver with caramelised onions and veal kidneys both cooked on the open fire in the centre of the restaurant. (The smell as you walk through the door of the restaurant is quite irresistible)

We also had a quarter pichet (carafe) of the house wine, a good crisp burgundy from the Maconnais, which was a perfect match with some very garlicky snails.

It was a reminder old France still exists - lunch took a leisurely two and a half hours and the beaming patron, who had obviously enjoyed a good few lunches in his time, showed us personally to the door and shook our hands as we left.

In true French fashion you can park free in the next door car park from 12 till 2. (This applies in most French towns.)The French really have got their priorities right.