Beaucoup de dégustations en Champagne!

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BY: George Budd

Published: 1st June, 2014

My preparation for this weekend's Merida Summer Monkey can probably be best described as sub-optimal... Nick Evans needed to buy some Champagne for his wedding and so we arranged a little jaunt over to Épernay for 3 days. My wife and I have been there a few times before and always have a really great time visiting the small champagne producers in the villages around Épernay. They're so friendly and really love their Champagne, so are (usually) really welcoming and willing to let you have a taste, a tour and a chat as long as you buy a couple of bottles. It really makes you realise how overpriced the mass market champagne like Möet, Mumm and the like is. They buy most of their grapes from the smaller producers, who proudly tell you they keep the best stuff for themselves, store the champagne in their cellars for the legal minimum 15 months and then charge you £40-£50 a bottle for it. The equivalent from an independent Récoltant Manipulant producer who grows their own grapes and stores the wine in their cellar for around 5 years is about £14. The price difference is even more extreme once you start looking at vintages (called Millésimes) or small-plot champagne. One of our personal favourites is Paul Lebrun in Cramant. A bottle of their 2002 vintage is about £17. The equivalent 'grown in a small plot in Cramant' 2002 from a big name could be anything up to £150... Nick chose a really yummy Champagne from Tornay in Bouzy (yes, really). After a few bottles in a random local food fair and a few more during the day I was pretty hanging going into this race.

Caesar's Camp is one of my favourite venues. I love the hills and the fast, flowy trails. It was an amazing lap, the first half was really lumpy and had a lot of power climbs, the second had one massive climb and then was a little tamer. The first half really took it out of me! I did my usual attack off the front at the start and try to destroy everyone else. This was working well, but then I got a(nother!) puncture when leading by 2 mins. I fixed it and kept going but had dropped to 5th having lost 5mins. I chased and chased, ended up comfortably back in 2nd but just couldn't close Tim down. I managed to close to only 2mins by the end but I was absolutely spent. Sitting here writing this I'm absolutely ruined. Can barely move. What a hard race! The chasing meant absolutely nothing less than giving it 100% every lap hoping I'd make up more time. Looking on timelaps, Tim's laptimes were about 5-10secs slower than mine, apart from one where I felt like I was going to pass out. Never felt like that before, got all dizzy and unbalanced. Kept going hoping it would go away, took some gels and felt a bit better.

Can we have more like this please??!!

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