I’ve always loved Champagne. Not just to drink, of course, or to cook with, but to visit. Seeing those vineyards spread like patchwork picnic blankets over the hills around Reims and Epernay never fails to lift my spirits.

The whole region was a bit of get-out-of-jail card for me when I was working in Paris. Whenever I needed to escape the pressures of Guy Savoy’s kitchen and that loud, boisterous, arrogant city, I’d lose myself for a couple of hours among all the little unmarked champagne houses.

I was always amazed by their hospitality, sharing stunning wines over plates of simple food, so it was fantastic to be invited to join the grape pickers at Mumm, one of Champagne’s best-known houses, for its end-of-harvest lunch last year. Seeing the tables set out in the grand-cru vineyard at Verzenay, with its famous windmill standing guard on the hill, you could sense the excitement as another season drew to a close.

Every year, 100,000 workers descend on the region, nearly 1,000 of them to Mumm, for two weeks of intensive picking. They used to work through until mid-October, but last year it was all over by the end of September. Apparently over six years the harvest has come forward by two whole weeks – that’s global warming for you.

I used to go potato picking with my brother Ronnie (until he was caught filling most of the sacks with mud), so I know what back-breaking work it is, but somehow it seems far more glamorous when the end result is champagne rather than a bag of frozen chips. The pickers will have been up since 5.30am, had a simple harvest breakfast of cheese omelette and maybe andouillettes, and by 2.30pm are hungry for their lunch.

When I create menus based around champagne, they tend to be very refined. A spurt of champagne added at the last moment to an oyster and scallop velouté or to a classic beurre blanc – this not only aerates and lightens the sauce, but also adds a sexiness and glamour. Similarly, I’ll add champagne at the table to poached strawberries or a fresh-fruit sorbet. But here in vineyards, they like to keep things simple. It might be champagne they are drinking, but it will be out of cheap tumblers, and the food is down to earth, but no less satisfying.

Today’s menu is typically rustic "cuisine terroir" – food from the region. The French concept of terroir is that everything is determined by the location, soil, even the climate where it is grown or produced. Just as the pinot noir grapes here take their nuances of flavour from the chalky soil and open slopes they grow on, so the food has a local, unfussy wholesomeness particular to the region.

We start with pâté en croûte and a wonderfully creamy cheese and leek quiche, followed by potée champenoise – a classic one-pot dish of the region, a bit like pot au feu or cassoulet, which can be dressed up or down, depending on what you have to hand: lamb, pork, veal, beef, sausage, carrots, leeks, potatoes, turnips, etc. Our version has ham knuckle, turnips, cabbage and cassoulet beans. It’s ideal for eating when you’re sitting outside with your feet caked in mud. And to finish? Grape tartlets, of course: fresh red and green grapes set in a pastry cream on a sweet-pastry crust. Perfect.

Meanwhile, the banter among the pickers has been growing ever more voluble, like some big, happy wedding party. It’s great to see – all sorts of people from different ages and walks of life getting together and finding common ground over the most important things in life – good honest food and a glass or three of champagne.

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