Paris & Champagne for Valentine's

11 - 13 February 2012

For this Champagne holiday we stay in Paris and include a day out to the Champagne vineyards – which are just 45 minutes away by train! You’ll travel out to Paris on Saturday by Eurostar, just over 2 hours from London.

Our base for the weekend is a 4* hotel in central Paris, in the Opera region, close to the Galeries Lafayette and the Opera Garnier. On Sunday morning, we take the TGV from Paris out to Champagne where you will be met by our Wine Guide for a private tour of a Champagne House, where you will see the underground cellars, dug from the chalk by the Roman’s as building materials for the city, and in the afternoon a grower Champagne House. There will be more Champagne over lunch, as our aim is to taste a wide spectrum of Champagnes during our day’s wine touring in the region.

As on all Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours’ Champagne weekends, you will receive a special welcome and generous tastings at houses that we have been visiting for many years. This tour is unescorted whilst on the journey and in Paris. You’ll have an experienced Wine Guide to accompany you for the day once you arrive in Reims.

Dining out in Paris

Paris, of course, has a wealth of wonderful restaurants, brasseries and bistros from many with Michelin stars (advance booking highly recommended) to more reasonably priced gourmet restaurants and traditional style brasseries. We provide a list of all our tried and tested restaurants before the trip with phone numbers, so you can book ahead if you wish. We would strongly recommend booking ahead if you have a specific Michelin starred restaurant in mind.

The Champagne Houses we’ll visit:

Champagne Taittinger

We visit the beautiful cellars of Champagne Taittinger, which weave for kilometres under the city of Reims. These were carved out of the chalk by the Romans to use for building materials and now offer Taittinger’s prestige Cuvée, ‘Comtes de Champagne’. Taittinger is one of a handful of the remaining independently owned Houses and we have found their NV to be consistantly one of our favourites. Over recent years several interesting cuvées have been created too. This visit is an excellent introduction to Champagne, you will hear the explanation of the methode champenoise, with additional information thrown in by our own UK wine expert. You will then taste a couple of their excellent champagnes in the privacy of their elegant tasting room.

Champagne Hatté

Champagne Hatté is a small producer with 10 hectares in the Grand Cru Village of Verzenay, in the Montagne de Reims region which are gentle hills, rather than mountains, to the South of Reims. This region is predominantely planted with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes. In striking contrast to the stunning cellars we have seen this morning, the cellars at Hatte look like no more than a garage and tucked below this is a small cellar housing old barrels. The family is traditionalist (like the great house of Krug and Roederer) so still vinify some of their wines in oak, which is not surprising since the founder of the House, Louis Hatte was the chief winemaker at Roederer until 1952.

After the visit you’ll return to Paris for the evening in time for dinner. Next morning, you’ll check out of the hotel and continue directly.

Rigoletto at the Bastille Opera House – optional extra

If you would like to include an evening of opera with this Champagne Weekend, we can offer you the chance to see Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Bastille Opera House as an optional extra _(please call for availability of tickets and price but book before Christmas at the latest as after this there are unlikely to be opera tickets still available).

The opera stars Zeljko Lucic in the role of Rigoletto, and Nino Machaidze as Gilda. Serbian-born baritone Lucic has had a prominent international career since 1993, and is especially well-known for his performances in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi; having portrayed 23 leading roles from the great composer’s works. Nino Machaidze, born in Georgia in 1983, studied at La Scala and debuted in the Teatro de Roma. Her first appearance at the renowned Salzburg Festival was in the role of Juliette alongside Villazon, where her performance was described as “sensational”.

The Bastille Opera House is the work of the Canadian-Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott, who was chosen in November 1983 after an international competition and was selected from 1700 entrants. The theatre was inaugurated on July 13th 1989. This vast arena is famed for its acoustics and all round good visibility for the audience. BOOK EARLY FOR TICKETS!