Our new wine tour to Champagne takes you to some of the best wine producers. The program also includes some outstanding gourmet meals. It is a journey that showcases a side of Champagne that not many get to see. It shows you what is behind the fancy façades.
The grandest street in Champagne is the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. Here you find several of the famous champagne houses side by side. But it is not any ordinary office buildings or standard wineries. Moët & Chandon, Demoiselle, Vranken, Pol Roger, Mercier, Boisel, Perrier Jouët to mention some of them. Along the street it is more like amazing palatial buildings. Under-ground is hidden kilometre after kilometre of tunnels filled with champagne bottles.
Reims, the other major city in Champagne, has its impressive façades as well. Most spectacular of all is of course the Cathedral of Reims, one of France’s major historic monuments. Kings were crowned here in the past. It survived, almost intact, the world wars. Equally stunning inside as it is outside. But in Reims there are also several of the big champagne “houses”: Roederer, Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Taittinger, Pommery, Mumm, Ruinart and so on.
What hides behind these elegant façades are often quite banal production units, a winery vat rooms where the wine-making takes place.
With some of the sparkling wines of Champagne it is the same thing: there is a fancy and impressive façade, a famous and impressive brand, a glossy product packaging. But that does not mean that what is in the bottle is necessarily good. Champagne is probably the one wine regions in the world that is most driven by marketing and by brands. The largest producer of this wine district makes an astounding 20-25% of the 300 million bottles that are produced annually. Then one can understand that it is not always as artisanal production.
But there is another Champagne too. That of the ambitious producers making wines of high quality and with great individuality. That where the contents of the bottle is more important than the fancy “façade”. That which is run by enthusiasts and talented winemakers.
It is this side of Champagne that we particularly keen to show you on the new wine tour to Champagne: the top quality producers, vineyards and wineries with character. Less of marketing façades and more of honest and delicious wines of outstanding quality.
So the program may not always feature the famous names that everyone all over the world has heard of (and that many other trips to Champagne focuses on). The smaller (and often not so world famous) wine producers, who put all their effort into making top-quality wines seldom have a big budget to promote themselves internationally. But we also do have on the program some of the famous producers, carefully selected. There are those who make very good wines among those too.
Both among small and among the big champagne producers, we have selected the best and the most interesting to show you.
But it does not stop there. On this trip you can expect also to enjoy some very special meals. Champagne is not just a luxury drink. It is also a wine region where you eat well, very well, especially if you, like us, have the privilege of being received at the home at the champagne producers’ for lunch. And of course we will serve you champagne all through the meal. With no doubt some very special cuvée that it is a pure privilege to taste. Champagne with food? Absolutely!
Take a look at our program for the luxurious wine and food tour to Champagne, a memory for life!
Are you coming?
(The wine tour to Champagne is currently offered as a custom designed wine tour on our English language program. On our Scandinavian program it is offered as a scheduled Champagne wine tour in October.)
