Champagne Camille Savés
Champagne Taittinger
Pre-Christmas Champagne Buying Weekend
This Pre-Christmas Champagne tour coincides with the Reims Christmas Market, a fabulous event with 125 stalls, selling gifts, decorations and traditional food on the Place d’Erlon, the Condorcet and Theodore Dubois streets. There are also orchestral and choral concerts and events in the beautiful cathedral.
Champagne is fun to drink and a fascinating wine to see being made and being easy to get to makes for a great weekend. Our base for the weekend is a comfortable 3* hotel in the centre of the lively attractive city of Reims.
Our aim is to taste a wide spectrum of Champagnes, to visit a good cross section of Houses, from those that forged Champagne’s reputation such as Taittinger and Hatté, as well as to search out quality growers and rising stars in the villages. Please note that this is a provisional schedule and these Champagne Houses have yet to be confirmed.
You will taste at least 20 champagnes over the course of the weekend, starting at breakfast. You will receive a special welcome and generous tastings at houses that we have been visiting for many years.
Your Comparative Tastings
We want to show you as broad a spectrum of Champagnes over the weekend as possible. So, as always 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 two tastings, one each 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 as well as the famous names. Most will be to your liking though 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!
Evening Meals
Reims has a wealth of wonderful restaurants, from Michelin two star restaurants (early booking essential!) to more reasonably priced gourmet restaurants and traditional style brasseries. We provide a list of all our tried and tested ones before the trip with phone numbers, so you can book ahead if you wish. However, we will make a reservation at two of our favourite (reasonably priced) brasseries and you are very welcome to join our wine guide or tour manager for dinner where they will select some interesting wines.
This again is one of the great advantages of an Arblaster & Clarke fully escorted tour, we give you the flexibility to dine alone if this is what your prefer, or the fun of being part of a lively party who generally all get on together really well, especially after the champagne tasting has broken the ice! This is especially appreciated by those clients who travel alone with us.
Champagne Breakfasts
Breakfast is served each morning at the hotel on the top floor, from where there is a superb view over the town and out towards the cathedral. The A&C tour manager is on hand to exclusively serve our clients with a glass of champagne to go with their buffet breakfast – morning’s will never seem the same again!
Free Time for Lunch in Reims
Lunchtime on Sunday is free in Reims. You will have time to explore Reims and choose a cafe table to sit at and people watch while you enjoy some local food and a glass of champagne, perhaps!
Our Sunday afternoon visit departs mid afternoon and of course if you decide you would rather linger over your lunch, explore Reims further, or simply rest, you can of course choose to miss the visit and meet up with again later for dinner if you prefer.
Champagne Taittinger
We visit the beautiful cellars of Champagne Taittinger, which weave for kilometres under the city of Reims. They were carved out of the chalk by the Romans and now house the prestige Cuvée of Taittinger, the ‘Comtes de Champagne’. This is the perfect introduction to Champagne; we see how it is made and then taste a couple of champagnes in 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 East 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 Hatté 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 their wines in oak, which is not surprising since the founder of the House, Louis Hatte was the chief winemaker at Roederer until 1952. We will taste these forceful champagnes with Madame Hatté or her son. This is always a “laid back” experience, but the wines are powerful and extremely well made. The family belong to the Special Club of Vignerons, and each of the members produce a wine labelled as “Special Club” which is strictly vetted for quality and bottled in a traditional style bottle. Their top cuvée, Cuvée Benjamin, named after the youngest child, is a forceful, elegant wine, totally typical of Verzenay and made mainly from Pinot Noir, sadly the labelling is a little tacky – but don’t let this put you off! The wines are all incredibly good value – ranging from just 13e to 18e for the top wines. Bring cash and stock up here if you like high quality, full flavoured wines – highly recommended!
Champagne Canard-Duchêne
We enjoy lunch at Champagne Canard Duchêne in Ludes. The Champagne is perhaps simple, but has a very accessible fruit-driven style. We will be given a guided tour of the cellars, which contain an interesting and unusual exhibition. This will be followed by a spectacular demonstration of opening a champagne bottle (sabrage), a tasting and the opportunity to visit their great shop where you can stock up on champagne related gifts.
After the visits we continue our journey directly back to Calais on on to Dover and London arriving late evening.
