Épernay - Avenue de Champagne

How to Complete

5 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 📜 1

   Walk the Most Expensive Pavement on Earth

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: Start at Place de la République (the town square at the foot of Avenue de Champagne, where the Tourist Office sits at No. 7) and walk the 1.5 km straight shot east toward the vineyard horizon.

   💡 WHAT: Beneath every step you take, there is more than $2 billion worth of champagne aging in 110 kilometres of chalk tunnels. This is not a metaphor. The Romans quarried this same chalk — 30 metres below your feet — to build Durocortorum, their capital of Gallia Belgica (modern Reims). The chalk road you followed from Roman Reims? It ends here, on this pavement. When the Champagne houses dug their crayères in the 1700s, they were excavating the same geological seam the Romans had mapped 1,500 years earlier. The UNESCO inscription (2015) calls this 'an internationally renowned agro-industrial enterprise.' That's bureaucrat language for: this is where Western civilization decided champagne was worth fighting over.

   🎯 HOW: Walk slowly. Look up at the façades — every one of these mansions was built from champagne money, most of them in the late 1800s when the houses were printing fortune. At No. 20, you'll see the Moët & Chandon iron gates. At No. 26-28, the Belle Époque mansion of Perrier-Jouët. Further down, the red tower of De Castellane marking the far end of the avenue. The walk takes 20 minutes at a dawdle. Do it twice — once to orient, once to notice what you missed.

   🔄 BACKUP: If it's raining, the walk is still worthwhile — the houses are even more dramatic in grey light, and the absence of crowds makes the scale of it more legible.

   🍷 Log Memory
2. 🍷 2

   Descend Into the Cellars Where Napoleon and Churchill Once Drank (on the Same Street, for Different Reasons)

   wine $$

   📍 WHERE: Moët & Chandon, 20 Avenue de Champagne — book in advance at visites@moet.fr; tours run 9:30am-5pm daily. Entry from €48 for the standard tasting experience.

   💡 WHAT: In 1782, a boy named Jean-Rémy Moët met a boy named Napoleon Bonaparte at military school in Brienne-le-Château. They became friends. Twenty-five years later, Napoleon — now Emperor — stopped in Épernay on his way to war in the East. Jean-Rémy, now mayor of Épernay, gave him a cellar tour and filled his wagon with cases. Napoleon did this before every campaign. The one time he didn't — Waterloo — he lost. That story lives in these tunnels. Three floors down, 30 metres under the avenue, you'll walk 17 miles of tunnels cut from chalk that's been aging champagne since before the American Revolution. But here's what the tour doesn't emphasize: in 1940, when the Nazis arrived and demanded 50,000 bottles per week, the Moët director Robert-Jean de Vogüé ran the Resistance from this house and ordered his cellarmen to build false walls — sealing off entire tunnel sections so German requisition teams couldn't reach the vintage bottles. He was arrested in November 1943. The champagne behind those false walls survived. He survived too. When Patton's Third Army liberated Épernay on 28 August 1944, those sealed rooms were reopened and the bottles were 'liberated and popped.'

   🎯 HOW: Take the classic cellar tour (the entry-level experience at €48 includes a two-champagne tasting). Ask your guide specifically about the WWII false walls — not all guides lead with this story but all know it. The 17 miles of tunnel is navigated on foot; wear flat shoes.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Moët is fully booked, Mercier (also on the Avenue) runs an electric train through 18 km of its own tunnels — a different aesthetic (populist, fun, Gustave Navlet bas-reliefs on the walls) but equally cinematic underground. Prices similar.

   🍷 Log Memory
3. 🍷 3

   Find the Bottle That Was Lost for 60 Years — Then Order It by Name

   wine $$$

   📍 WHERE: Perrier-Jouët, 28 Avenue de Champagne — book in advance at their website (perrier-jouet.com/visit-us); from €70. The house is called Maison Belle Époque, restored to its original 1902 Art Nouveau style in 2017.

   💡 WHAT: In 1902, a cellarmaster commissioned Émile Gallé — the greatest Art Nouveau glassmaker alive — to paint Japanese anemones directly onto champagne magnums. It was too expensive to mass-produce. A handful of hand-painted bottles were made, then cellared. Then forgotten. For 60 years. In 1964, cellarmaster André Bavaret was doing routine inventory and found them. Gallé had been dead since 1904. The bottles sat in the dark for six decades while wars came and went, the house changed hands, the world changed. In 1969 they released the first 'Belle Époque' cuvée using the rediscovered design — and it became one of the most recognizable bottles in wine history. You're drinking a story about what gets lost and what gets found.

   🎯 HOW: Book the 'Art du Millésime' experience (the vintage-focused tasting, €70+) — you'll try the Belle Époque Brut, likely alongside one or two other cuvées. When the bottle arrives, look at the anemone painted on the glass. Ask the host: 'What happened to the original Gallé magnums?' — most guides light up at this question. The Art Nouveau mansion itself is worth the visit separately; it was meticulously restored in 2017 and the salon is extraordinary.

   🔄 BACKUP: If fully booked, you can purchase Belle Époque in the Perrier-Jouët boutique on-site without a tour reservation. The bottle is the story — hold it, look at the flowers, remember Gallé died never knowing what became of them.

   🍷 Log Memory
4. ⛰️ 4

   Climb 237 Steps to See the Chalk Kingdom From Above

   adventure $

   📍 WHERE: De Castellane, 57 Rue de Verdun — at the far (eastern) end of the avenue, the red Art Nouveau tower you've been walking toward the whole time. Tours run 10am-12pm and 2pm-6pm; tasting included. The cellars are periodically closed for renovation but the tower climb continues independently — confirm current status with the tourist office (7 Avenue de Champagne) before going.

   💡 WHAT: The tower was built 1903-1905 — the gilded age of champagne money made visible in 66 metres of stone. It is the highest point in Épernay. At the top, what you see is the entire geography of what you've just walked: the Avenue stretching back west to Place de la République, the chalk hillsides rising south and north, the Marne valley below. But more specifically: you can see the vineyards. The champagne houses own the cellars but they don't grow the grapes — most Pinot Noir comes from the Montagne de Reims to the north, most Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs to the south. From De Castellane's tower you can see both ridges simultaneously. This is the view that explains why Épernay sits exactly here — at the meeting point of the two great chalk hillsides, where the underground rivers of grape varieties converge.

   🎯 HOW: The 237-step climb takes about 12 minutes. There is no lift. The view is 360 degrees. Come in the late afternoon when the light hits the hillsides at angle — the chalk turns golden. Bring your phone; this is the photograph that explains the whole day.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the tower is closed for maintenance, the Tourist Office rooftop terrace (7 Avenue de Champagne) offers a partial view of the avenue from a lower elevation — less dramatic but still orienting.

   🍷 Log Memory
5. 🍷 5

   Taste the Champagne Churchill Never Actually Tasted — At the House He Never Visited

   Optional

   wine $$$$

   📍 WHERE: Les 3 Domaines, 1 Avenue de Champagne (at the square end of the avenue, near the tourist office) — no booking required, walk-in welcome. This is where you drink grower champagne on the same street as the grands maisons, at a fraction of the price.

   💡 WHAT: Here's what nobody says out loud on the Avenue: the most famous champagne associated with this street — Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill — cannot be tasted here. Pol Roger is visible from the avenue (the façade is beautiful) but it is not open to the public. Churchill drank 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger in his lifetime — two bottles a day from 1908 until his death in 1965 — yet he NEVER visited Épernay. He called it 'the most drinkable address in the world' and never made the trip. When he died on 24 January 1965, Pol Roger placed a black mourning border on every bottle shipped to England — and kept it there until 1990. In his honour, they released the 1975 vintage as 'Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill' in 1984, launched at Blenheim Palace, sold only in magnum, the blend roughly 80% Pinot Noir — his preferred style. So you order it at Les 3 Domaines, which stocks grower champagnes from the Épernay terroir, and you toast the man who loved this place most and never came.

   🎯 HOW: Walk into Les 3 Domaines. The three winemaker-owners — Patrick Boivin, Vincent Testulat, Janisson-Baradon — present their own growers' champagnes. These are Récoltant-Manipulant (RM) bottles: the same people who grew the grapes made the wine. Order a flight. Ask specifically for any grower Pinot Noir-dominant cuvée — taste the chalk. Then, if budget allows, ask if they have Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill by the glass or bottle. If not, order any Churchill-era non-vintage Pol Roger at a wine shop nearby and toast outside on the avenue itself.

   🔄 BACKUP: Bar Brut (25 ter Avenue de Champagne) runs the same insider brief — biodynamic and organic grower champagnes, terrace on the avenue. Two different moods: Les 3 Domaines is warmer and food-focused; Bar Brut is cooler and purist.

   🍷 Log Memory

Insider Tips

• ✦

  Moët & Chandon tours are frequent and don't require advance booking

• ✦

  De Castellane has a tower you can climb for panoramic vineyard views

• ✦

  C.Comme for lunch pairs Champagne with refined French cuisine

• ✦

  Beneath this avenue are 110 km of cellars holding 200+ million bottles