Champagne Destination Guide
Forty Five Minutes From Paris And Nobody Stays The Night
The TGV from Paris Gare de l'Est reaches Reims in about forty five minutes. That fact does two things at once. It makes Champagne the easiest wine region in the world to add to a Paris trip, and it means the overwhelming majority of visitors come for a day, see one large house, and leave before dinner. Which is a shame, because the region only opens up on the second day, when the appointments move from the marble reception rooms of the big houses to a grower's garage in a village of four hundred people, and the wine starts to make sense. Two nights turns a tour into a trip.
The planning decision: Reims, Epernay, or between them
Reims is a city, with the cathedral, restaurants, hotels and the largest chalk cellars beneath it. Epernay is a small town whose reason for existing is the Avenue de Champagne, a straight run of grand houses with something like a hundred kilometers of tunnels underneath. They are about twenty five minutes apart by car. Reims suits people who want a city in the evenings; Epernay suits people who want to walk to their appointments and be closer to the vineyards. Between them, up on the hillside at Champillon, sits the third option with the best views over the Marne valley. All three work, and the choice mostly comes down to whether you want a restaurant scene at night or silence.
The grande marques and the growers
This is the most useful thing to understand before you go. The famous names, the grande marques, mostly buy grapes from hundreds of growers and blend across villages and years to make a house style that tastes the same every time. That is a real craft and their cellars are extraordinary. But the more interesting story of the past twenty years has been the grower producers, families who farm their own parcels and make wine only from them, often from a single village or a single plot, with lower dosage and more variation between years. Villages like Ambonnay, Bouzy, Cramant, Avize, Le Mesnil sur Oger and Vertus are where those growers sit. A good trip does both: one great house for the theatre and the chalk, and two or three growers for what champagne actually is now.
Appointment only, and the harvest that closes the door
Nothing here is drop in. The large houses run scheduled tours that must be booked ahead and fill in season. Growers receive visitors by appointment, usually from the person who made the wine, often on a Saturday morning because they are working the rest of the week, and many of the best are reached through an introduction rather than a website. Sundays are generally closed. August sees widespread closures for annual holidays. Harvest, usually somewhere from late August into September and picked entirely by hand across the region, is the worst time to visit for access even though it is the most interesting time to see: everyone is in the vineyard or on the press and nobody is receiving. May, June, September after the pick, and October are the best months. Winter is cold, quiet and fine for cellar visits.
Where to stay, and the cathedral
Royal Champagne Hotel and Spa at Champillon sits on the escarpment between Reims and Epernay with the vineyards falling away below it and is the strongest base in the region. Domaine Les Crayeres in Reims is a chateau in its own park on the edge of the city, formal and classic, with the best dining room in Champagne. La Caserne Chanzy in Reims is the newer city option, walking distance from the cathedral. Beyond the hotels, the Reims cathedral is the reason to give the city a proper morning: French kings were crowned here for centuries, it was shelled badly in the First World War and rebuilt over decades, and the Chagall windows in the axial chapel are worth the visit alone. The chalk cellars beneath Reims and Epernay, some of them Roman quarries, are UNESCO listed.
When to begin
Three to four months is usually enough for the hotels, which are few but not enormously contested. The constraint is the appointments. Grower visits need arranging weeks ahead and cannot be squeezed in on the day, and the small number of famous houses that receive privately rather than on a public tour are booked much further out. Restaurant tables at the two or three destination dining rooms should be held with the hotel. Harvest dates shift by weeks depending on the year and should be confirmed for your dates if you want to see the pick.
Four experiences worth building the days around
- A chalk cellar visit at one grande marque in Reims, descending into the Roman quarries that hold millions of bottles at constant temperature.
- A morning with a grower in the Cote des Blancs, tasting from tank and barrel with the person who farms the parcel.
- The Avenue de Champagne in Epernay walked end to end, with an appointment at one house and lunch in the town.
- Reims cathedral early, for the coronation history and the Chagall windows before the coaches arrive.
Who this trip suits
This suits anyone who drinks champagne seriously and has never understood why one bottle differs from another. It suits couples wanting a short break with a very short journey, and it suits small client groups extremely well. Above all it suits travelers already going to Paris who can spare two nights.
When another plan may fit better
The landscape here is gentle rather than spectacular, and anyone coming for scenery will find it modest next to Provence or Tuscany. If half the party does not drink, the region is thin on other things to do. And if your only window falls during harvest or in August, expect a good deal of the door to be closed and plan the appointments with that in mind.
Plan it with one accountable advisor
Tell us your dates and whether you want the big houses, the growers or both, and we will build the appointment schedule first and place the hotel around it. Our luxury leisure travel planning handles the Paris connection and the Bordeaux extension in one itinerary.
