Champagne Weekends
Champagne Decanter
Champagne barrels
An A&C Champagne Weekend - stylish & fun
Champagne is the closest vineyard region to the UK so our Champagne wine tour makes a great weekend. Champagne is where Arblaster & Clarke first started our Wine Tours, with our first tour there in May 1987. Our fun, yet informative formula has actually changed little over the years - it was utterly original then and the style of these weekends remains unique to A&C.
The aim is to taste a wide spectrum of champagnes, so you will taste at least 25 champagnes over the course of the weekend. Of course you have to start at breakfast! You visit a cross section of producers, famous Houses in Reims, Epernay or Ay (those that forged Champagne’s reputation such as Taittinger and Veuve Clicquot) plus the good growers that we have sought out in the villages such as Ay, Bouzy and Le Mesnil. If you go the right places quality champagne can still be found for little over £10. Many of the top cuvées are superb value too.
Travelling with Arblaster & Clarke you receive a special welcome and generous Champagne tastings at houses that we have been visiting for many years. On every tour we have at least one meal as guests at one of these houses or growers. As we travel by coach from London you may bring back up to 36 bottles per person. Alternatively make you own way to Reims or join us from Paris.
Also see the more luxurious Champagne Extra Tours and The Ultimate Champagne
Travelling to Reims
On these wine tours we depart from central London in the morning and generally arrive into Reims between 1600 and 1700 local time (an hour ahead of UK time). You'll have time to relax or explore before the evening Comparative Champagne tasting.
We do everything possible to ensure that you have a very comfortable journey and are able to put your feet up, read a book or catch up the week's news, sleep or enjoy the scenery. Our Tour Manager serves complimentary tea, coffee and biscuits on the journey. There is no background music or videos. We stop off briefly on arrival to allow you to stock up with some French cheeses, some wine and bread etc to enjoy en-route which all seems to make the journey pass pleasantly and quickly! This is the great joy of not having to drive yourself. The other big advantage of coach travel is the views - you are much higher up than in a car or even a train and so see more.
Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours are not a coach company but we use coaches for these tours as it is a comfortable, hassle free and convenient way to get to the region and means that it is easy for you to bring back lots of champagne! For those of you that are concerned about the environment it is a very carbon friendly way to travel.
Evening Comparative Tastings
We want to show you as broad a spectrum of Champagnes over the weekend as possible. So, on Arblaster & Clarke Champagne weekends, your Wine Guide will show you a selection of Champagnes in order to introduce the various styles and different Houses or Growers in what will be a fun and illuminating evening. No two of our tastings are alike and no two Wine Guides have the same approach to presenting them. We like to choose some unusual Champagnes for you to taste and not just the famous names. Most will be to your liking though but perhaps some may not. You can normally learn more from these than those you liked, but hopefully you'll find one or two that you think are fabulous!
A note on buying Champagne on our tours!
One of the great advantages of coming on an escorted Arblaster & Clarke tour to Champagne is the opportunity we give you to taste lots of different champagnes over the course of the weekend. Not only is this an extremely enjoyable learning experience, it also helps you discover, in case you were not sure already, which style of champagnes you prefer! And of course, not only are you not having to worry about whose turn it is to drive, you also have a wine expert on hand to help you make any decisions on what to buy if you are intending to.
We always include visits to a couple of top notch smaller producers, whose wines are often not available in the UK and these are generally the best places to stock up at to bring home with you. Prices for non-vintage still start at around 13-15euros, which even with current exchange rates is still much less than you pay for cheap supermarket champagnes, and here we are talking about top quality champagnes from Grand Cru villages. It is also so much more enjoyable opening a bottle of champagne when you have met the person who made it, seen the vineyards and where it is made!
However, as these small producers are not really geared up for visits most of them do not accept credit cards, and even if they do, often the machine at a weekend is not working and can really slow down the buying process. So, we strongly recommend you work your budget out beforehand and for the smaller producers bring cash if you wish to make purchases.
At the great houses of Taittinger, Veuve-Clicquot and other such Houses there are shops and prices compare very well with the UK even now, especially when it comes to the price differential with vintage or prestige cuvees. Credit cards are taken here.
When we visit the most famous names Krug and Bollinger and another whose name we are not permitted to mention here, buying is not possible as they are simply not geared up for visits and do not have a shop - but you can find the wines in the shops in Reims if you do want to bring any back with you.
You may bring back 36 bottles per person on the coach so you will quickly save back a lot of the cost of your trip on the savings you make with your purchases!
Tours
Spring Champagne Weekend
20 - 22 March 2010
Autumn Champagne
29 - 31 October 2010
Pre-Christmas Champagne
27 - 29 November 2010
Aÿ Champagne Festival: Self-Drive
2 - 5 July 2010
