Hautvillers - Dom Pérignon's Abbey

How to Complete

4 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 📜 1

   Touch the Chalk That Built Rome's Champagne Capital

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: The exterior walls of the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers, Rue de l'Église, Hautvillers. The abbey complex is immediately visible as you enter the village from the south — its stone walls front the main road.

   💡 WHAT: Run your hand along the abbey wall. That stone is 80-million-year-old belemnite chalk — formed from microscopic squid-like creatures dying in a Cretaceous sea. Here is what nobody tells you: this is the SAME chalk that Roman soldiers quarried to build Durocortorum (what we now call Reims) in the 1st to 4th century AD. The Romans dug over 250 kilometres of tunnels through it beneath the city. Then in 280 AD, Emperor Probus repealed a 200-year ban on vineyard planting in Gaul and ordered his own legions to plant vines in this very valley. The Roman historian Aurelius Victor wrote: "In the same way Probus covered Gaul with vines" — using soldiers as farmworkers. Two years later, those same soldiers murdered Probus for making them do it. But the vines stayed. The monks arrived 370 years after that, built this abbey into the same chalk ridge, and carved their cellars out of the same rock. When you touch this wall, you are touching an 80-million-year chain that runs from a Cretaceous sea through Roman soldiers planting under military orders to Benedictine monks perfecting blends in chalk cellars to the most expensive bottle of champagne on earth.

   🎯 HOW: The abbey exterior is viewable from the street at any hour — no admission needed. Stand at the main gate on Rue de l'Église and look at the coursed chalk masonry. The Moët & Chandon ownership means the abbey interior is private, but the church (Saint-Sindulphe, attached to the abbey complex) is the real destination — see Step 2.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the village is busy with tour groups, walk 100m north on Rue Dom Pérignon to find quieter sections of the same chalk walls with better light in the afternoon.

   🍷 Log Memory
2. 📜 2

   Find the Two Monks Buried Side by Side — and Understand Why That Matters

   history Free

   📍 WHERE: Église Saint-Sindulphe, Rue de l'Église, Hautvillers — the parish church adjoining the abbey. Open year-round, free entry. The choir is at the far (east) end of the nave.

   💡 WHAT: Walk to the choir. On the floor, two stone slabs lie side by side. One reads 'Hic Jacet Dom Petrus Perignon' — Dom Pierre Pérignon, cellar master here for 47 years (1668–1715), the monk who spent his entire career trying to PREVENT bubbles and invented instead the art of blending grapes from different villages. The other belongs to Dom Thierry Ruinart, who died here in 1709, six years before his friend. Here is the thing that will stop you cold: these two monks worked together in this abbey, comparing notes on wine across the same chalk cellars you just touched outside. Dom Ruinart was so talented and so devoted to Dom Pérignon that his nephew Nicolas Ruinart was raised on stories of their experiments — and in 1729, inspired by his uncle's tales from this very room, Nicolas founded Maison Ruinart, the world's first Champagne house. He built it in 8 kilometres of Roman chalk tunnels under Reims. The thread runs: Roman soldiers plant vines → monks inherit the vineyards → two monks collaborate here → one monk's nephew creates Champagne as we know it — and uses the Roman chalk quarries to do it. Both names are now on prestige cuvées. Both men are under your feet.

   🎯 HOW: Enter the church (no ticket required). Walk straight to the choir. The two tomb slabs are in the floor directly before the altar. Take a moment — the church is typically quiet and unhurried. The 17th-century woodwork carved by the monks themselves lines the walls. No photography restrictions are enforced but silence is expected.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the church is closed (rare — it's nearly always open), the Tourist Office at 1 Rue Dom Pérignon can confirm opening times: +33 3 26 57 06 35.

   🍷 Log Memory
3. 🍷 3

   Taste the Three Components Dom Pérignon Refused to Leave Separate

   wine $$

   📍 WHERE: Au 36, 36 Rue Dom Pérignon, 51160 Hautvillers. Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:30am–6pm. Book ahead at au36.net — this fills early, especially weekends.

   💡 WHAT: Ask for the three-grape varietal flight. For roughly €44 (full tasting menu with food) or à la carte, you will taste Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, and Pinot Noir from Champagne — each grape vinified alone, each served separately. Here is why this is the most important wine exercise you can do in this village: Dom Pérignon's actual genius was not discovering champagne's bubbles (he tried to eliminate them). It was realising that no single grape, no single village, could achieve complexity alone. He was the first to systematically source from multiple villages and assemble them — Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims for structure and red-fruit backbone, Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs for acid and elegance, Meunier from the Vallée de la Marne for roundness and approachability. As you taste each glass alone — note the hardness of the Chardonnay, the rustic earthiness of the Meunier, the grippy tannin of the Pinot Noir — you will understand in your mouth what Dom Pérignon understood in his: none of these is the wine. The wine is what happens when a cellar master who spent 47 years in a chalk abbey decided to treat the whole Champagne region as a single vineyard.

   🎯 HOW: Arrive without a reservation only before 11am on weekdays. The outdoor terrace looks over the vineyard. Tell the server you want to taste the three cépage (grapes) separately — they know exactly what you're asking. Budget €20–€44 depending on whether you add food (the local white blood sausage in puff pastry is the Roman Odyssey move — sausage and wine, the soldier's meal).

   🔄 BACKUP: If Au 36 is fully booked, several grower-producers on Rue Dom Pérignon and Rue de la Boulangerie offer tastings by appointment — the Tourist Office (Rue Dom Pérignon) maintains a current list.

   🍷 Log Memory
4. ⛰️ 4

   Stand Where Roman Soldiers Stood and Watch the Valley They Planted

   adventure Free

   📍 WHERE: Belvédère Dom Pérignon, Rue de Cumières, Hautvillers. Walk west from the abbey church on Rue de l'Église, turn onto Rue de Cumières — the belvedere is a short walk (5 minutes) with a small parking area and an orientation table marking what you can see.

   💡 WHAT: The orientation panel at the belvedere names every landmark across the 180-degree panorama: the village of Cumières, the town of Épernay, the silver ribbon of the Marne River, the vineyards climbing the slopes in every direction. In 280 AD, Roman legions commanded by Emperor Probus stood on this same chalk ridge and planted vines under military orders. Probus had just repealed a 200-year-old ban on viticulture in Gaul. He was trying to rebuild a fragmented empire — and he believed wine was the civilizational glue. His soldiers disagreed (they murdered him two years later), but the vines took root. By the time Saint Nivard founded the abbey up this hill in 650 AD, the slopes below already had 370 years of vine history. By the time Dom Pérignon arrived in 1668, the monks had been making wine from Roman-descended stock for a thousand years. Every vineyard you can see from this belvedere is a direct descendant of what Roman soldiers planted on orders. The view has not fundamentally changed — chalk ridge, river valley, sea of vines — since the legions left.

   🎯 HOW: Free access, no ticket. Best light is late afternoon when the low sun illuminates the Marne valley floor. The orientation table is mounted at the viewpoint. Use the panel to locate Épernay's Avenue de Champagne (where Moët's 28km of chalk cellars run beneath the most expensive strip of agricultural land in France). You are looking at the entire Roman-to-Champagne arc in a single glance.

   🔄 BACKUP: The 'La côte à bras' viewpoint (GPS: 49°04'39.0"N, 3°56'25.9"E) offers an alternative angle looking toward Reims if the Belvédère is crowded with tour groups. Both are free and open at all hours.

   🍷 Log Memory

Insider Tips

• ✦

  The abbey church holds Dom Pérignon's tomb - pilgrimage site for wine lovers

• ✦

  Au 36 restaurant has panoramic terrace overlooking Moët & Chandon vineyards

• ✦

  Walk the Champagne Hillsides UNESCO trails through Roman-era vineyard terraces

• ✦

  Visit in September for harvest to see hand-picking in Grand Cru vineyards