OBSESSI
ONS24 OCTOBER 2020
Cochelet, You Say?Toasting Champagne’straditional harvest feastBy Sylvie BigarJUST AS WE PULLED INTO the courtyard of Château
de la Marquetterie, the monumental Taittinger
estate in the Champagne region, the sun came
out, painting the autumn vineyard foliage gold.
I was there for the Cochelet. While Burgundy
boasts La Paulée and Beaujolais the R’voule, the
area around Reims and Épernay has heralded,
since the Middle Ages, the end of the Champagne
harvest with a feast called the Cochelet. Though
its origins aren’t certain, the name may come
from the word coq (meaning “rooster”), since
traditionally the workers would pour wine down
a rooster’s throat before placing the drunken bird
to wobble on the tables—at least, that’s how the
story goes.
By the time we arrived, the kitchen crew had
already been working for days preparing the
historic dishes of the local terroir: sausages and
lentils; stewed calf’s head; and the famous potée
champenoise, a meat, bean, and vegetable orgy.
“We always brought steaming pots to the dozen
tables set in the courtyard. One time, the team
leader pulled out an accordion, a woman started
singing Édith Piaf, and everybody got up to
dance,” reminisced Jacqueline Maltot, the cook
and caretaker who ruled the château’s kitchen
for decades. In the past, every village celebrated
with its own version of the Cochelet. The tractors
were decorated with flowers, and people played
tricks on one another.
“The harvest workers wore their best clothes,”
said Maltot, who took over the job from her
mother-in-law and later trained her daughter,
Géraldine Doulet, who has since taken over.
“We used to house all the seasonal workers,”
said Vitalie Taittinger, the house’s 41-year old
president, who, earlier this year, took over the
reins of the company. “Men and women—often
the same families year after year. They came from
France’s poorer northern regions.”THE ODEMost of these laborers would save up their
vacation time to work the harvest. In two weeks,
they often made what they usually earned in
three months. Today, few workers stay at the
vineyards, and the Cochelet tradition has
dwindled. But Vitalie Taittinger loves this feast
and will continue to invite staff, clients, family,
and friends to a vast Champagne banquet.
On that early October day, I joined an eclectic
crowd in the wine cellar. We savored Taittinger’s
fruity, golden Brut Réserve, accompanied by
cubes of earthy pâté en croûte and foie gras to
the sounds of a jazz band. Under an intricate
pattern of exposed beams, two long wooden
tables were set over carpets. The Taittinger family
ambled around, ensuring everyone was comfort-
able, introducing guests to one another.
Taittinger’s tête de cuvée, or top wine, Comtes,
comes from five different chalky terroirs and
matures for years in the Gallo-Roman quarries
under the former Saint-Nicaise abbey in Reims.
As I savored my glass of 2007 Comtes de Cham-
pagne Blanc de Blancs, I loved its combination of
toasty and lemony flavors; the refined bubbles;
its sunny, clear hue; and the way it partnered
with the intensely flavorful poularde de Bresse
served with lobster coulis and a multicolored
bounty of local vegetables—the combination was
sublime. The more we ate, the more we drank;
the more we drank, the more we laughed. Even
though this was just an echo of the Cochelets of
yesteryear, the setting, the old vines surrounding
the château, and my vibrant hosts created the
kind of harvest feast that’s impossible to forget.illustration by GRAHAM ROUMIEU