Day 1 – Monday 27th of September
5 place Général Gouraud – Reims
It feels really great being back in La Belle Champagne for the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak. The VIP-group met up at Charles de Gaulle Airport on a rainy Monday morning. Our driver Gilles drove us passed the rural countryside east of Paris towards Reims. I always get in a great mood no mather the weather outside the window when I pass the countryside east of Paris towards the Marne valley.
When you drive past the cemeteries from the First World War and look over the endless rows of symmetrically neutral white crosses, I think that the rows of crosses lost at the horizon are a bit like moving your gaze along the row of bubbles in a glass of champagne. Many crosses, many bubbles. Here soldiers died for the first time in history on a monumental scale. Here every dead soldier became a white cross in an endless symmetrical row as far as the eye can reach. This is where the world’s first international wines were produced on an industrial scale. Bubbles, death and a large number of bottles, fallen life and death, for me this is Champagne.
