Champagne is a historic province and wine region of north-eastern France, tucked between Paris, Lorraine, and the Belgian and Luxembourg borders. It gives its name to the only wine in the world protected by a geographical indication so strict that no other sparkling wine may legally use the word — and most of what you come here for is connected, in some way, to that fact. The chalky soil, the cool northerly climate, and the blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes combine to produce the bottle-fermented sparkling wine that has defined celebration since the late 17th century, when the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon first codified the techniques at his abbey in Hautvillers.
The two great wine cities are Reims and Épernay, about 25 km apart. Reims, the larger, is the historic coronation city of the French kings — every king from Clovis to Charles X was crowned at the city's Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral, one of the most important in France, and still breathtaking despite damage from both World Wars. Under Reims run more than 250 kilometres of chalk cellars (crayères) where the great Champagne houses — Veuve Clicquot, Taittinger, Pommery, G.H. Mumm — age their bottles; most offer guided tours and tastings. Épernay, smaller and quieter, is built along the famous Avenue de Champagne — a single kilometre-long street said to be the richest in the world, with the cellars of Moët & Chandon, Pol Roger, Perrier-Jouët and Mercier all hidden beneath the road surface. The countryside between the two, the Marne Valley and the Montagne de Reims, is a landscape of chalky vineyards and stone villages that can be explored on day drives or along the signposted Route Touristique du Champagne.
Beyond the wine, the region has more. Troyes in the south is one of the least-visited and most beautiful medieval towns in France — a UNESCO-worthy candidate whose half-timbered old quarter has somehow escaped both mass tourism and wartime destruction. The forested Ardennes in the north cross into Belgium and offer excellent walking country, and the small walled town of Provins, a former medieval trade-fair city, is a separate UNESCO World Heritage Site and a feasible day trip from Paris.
