Reims Food, Wine & Culture Guide
Visit on A Taste of France Culinary Tour
Champagne country in June is a landscape in its prime — endless corduroy rows of vine climbing the chalk hillsides, the great cathedral of Reims rising over the rooftops, and beneath the streets, mile upon mile of cellar where the world’s most celebrated wine sleeps in the dark. This is where A Taste of France raises its first glass.
History & Culture
Reims is a city of coronations. For more than a thousand years the kings of France were crowned beneath the soaring Gothic nave of its cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage masterpiece of medieval sculpture and light. But the city’s grandest history runs underground: the Romans quarried chalk here two thousand years ago, and the vast cellars they left behind became the cathedral-like caves in which Champagne itself was perfected.
A crown was placed on a king’s head in Reims. But the city’s real coronation happens every day, in a glass.
On the two glories of Reims
Must Visit
Reims Cathedral
The 13th-century Notre-Dame de Reims, where thirty-three French kings were crowned, is one of the supreme achievements of Gothic architecture — a facade crowded with sculpture, the famous smiling angel, and a wall of stained glass that now includes windows by Marc Chagall. It is a fitting first landmark for a tour that celebrates the finest things France has made.
Landmark
The Avenue de Champagne, Épernay
A short drive from Reims, Épernay’s Avenue de Champagne is often called the most expensive street in the world — a grand boulevard beneath which more than a hundred million bottles rest in chalk cellars, lined by the mansions of the great houses. It is here, on the tour’s Champagne day, that the region’s wealth and artistry are most visibly on display.
Underground
The Crayères Chalk Cellars
Beneath the city lie the crayères, pyramid-shaped chalk pits dug by Roman hands and later linked into tens of kilometres of cellar. Cool, dark, and perfectly humid, they are the reason Champagne is made here — and descending into them, as we do on the tour, is to step into a working cathedral of wine.
Iconic Experience
The Great Houses of Champagne
The houses of Champagne — Moët & Chandon, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart — built their reputations on hospitality, and to be received in their surroundings is an experience of pure luxury. Their names read like a roll-call of celebration, and the tour goes to the very grandest of them to see how the magic is made.
Culinary Specialties
In Champagne, the meal and the wine are inseparable. Over three days the tour goes to the source — a private tour of the Moët & Chandon cellars in Épernay, a morning among the vineyards and wineries of the côtes, and a specially prepared regional lunch matched, of course, to the local cuvées. This is Champagne not as a passing toast but as a way of life.
Elsewhere, Champagne marks the occasion. In Reims, Champagne is the occasion — and everything else is arranged around it.
On drinking Champagne at its source
The Tour Table
The Moët & Chandon Cellars
On our Champagne day the tour descends into the most storied cellars of all. At Moët & Chandon in Épernay we explore some twenty-eight kilometres of galleries — the largest cellar network in Champagne — before a tasting of the house’s celebrated cuvées. Founded in 1743 and the maker of Dom Pérignon, Moët is Champagne at its grandest, and the perfect overture to the days that follow.
The Vineyards
A Morning on the Côtes
A day is given to the vineyards themselves — the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Blancs, where Pinot Noir, Meunier, and Chardonnay ripen on chalk. We visit the wineries, walk the rows, and learn how three grapes and a second fermentation become the most celebrated wine on earth, before sitting down to a regional lunch built around them.
Regional Classic
The Table of Champagne
Champagne’s cooking is quietly superb: jambon de Reims, creamy Chaource and Langres cheeses, and dishes cooked in the wine itself, like poulet au Champagne. Every course is designed to sit beside a glass of the local sparkling, so that the meal becomes a long, effervescent conversation between plate and flute.
Sweet & Savoury
Biscuits Roses & Ratafia
The biscuit rose de Reims has been baked in the city since the 1690s, its blush colour and delicate crumb designed for one purpose: to be dipped in Champagne without falling apart. Alongside it sits ratafia, the sweet regional aperitif of grape juice and marc — the sort of local specialty that turns a tasting into a lesson in place.
Vineyards & Village Life
Beyond the grand houses, Champagne is a landscape of small villages and family growers, of hillsides so distinctive that UNESCO added them to its World Heritage list. Life here moves with the vine — pruned in winter, watched all summer, harvested by hand each autumn. To drive the Champagne Route between Reims and Épernay in June, windows down through a sea of green, is to understand that this is farmland of the most aristocratic kind.
There are no ordinary fields in Champagne. Every hillside has a name, a reputation, and a price.
On the most valuable farmland in France
Landscape
The Montagne de Reims
Between Reims and Épernay rises the Montagne de Reims, a forested plateau ringed with Grand Cru villages and some of the most prized Pinot Noir vineyards in Champagne. Its slopes, part of the UNESCO-listed Champagne hillsides, are laced with quiet lanes made for slow exploration between tastings.
Village Life
Hautvillers, Cradle of Champagne
The hilltop village of Hautvillers is where the monk Dom Pérignon refined the art of Champagne in the abbey cellars, and it remains one of the prettiest villages in the region — wrought-iron signs, flower-hung houses, and views across an ocean of vine. It is the spiritual home of everything the tour comes to Champagne to celebrate.
Grand Architecture
The Mansions of Épernay
The Avenue de Champagne is lined with the palatial homes of the great houses — 19th-century statements of confidence built on the wealth of the bottle. Behind their gates lie manicured gardens and, below them, the cellars; above ground, they make one of the most elegant streetscapes in France.
Iconic Experience
The Champagne Route
The signposted Route Touristique du Champagne threads for hundreds of kilometres through the vineyards, villages, and grower-cellars of the region. Travelling it in early summer — pausing where a hand-painted sign invites a tasting — is the unhurried, luxurious heart of any stay in Champagne.
Champagne in June — A Taste of France Weather Guide
The tour reaches Reims and Champagne in mid-June
🌡️ Temperature
Mid-June in Champagne is warm and green, with daytime highs of 22–25°C (72–77°F) and fresh mornings ideal for walking the vineyards. Evenings soften to 12–15°C (54–59°F), pleasant for a long dinner with a light layer welcome after dark.
☀️ Sun & Rain
The days are long and largely sunny, though the region’s cool climate brings the occasional passing shower — part of what gives Champagne its bright acidity. The cellars, by contrast, hold a constant 10°C year round, so bring a wrap for the descent underground.
👗 What to Wear
Smart-casual layers and comfortable shoes for cellar visits and vineyard walks, where floors are damp and paths can be uneven. A jacket or pashmina is essential for the caves — the chill is real and immediate — and useful again on cooler evenings.
💡 General Tips
Champagne tastings are generous, so pace yourself and drink water between houses. Cellar tours involve steps and long, cool galleries, so wear flat, grippy shoes. And keep a camera ready on the Champagne Route — the interplay of vine, village, and sky in June is the region at its most photogenic.
Ready to Taste France?
Champagne is the sparkling overture to a journey that winds south through Burgundy, Lyon, Provence, and Bordeaux — weeks of markets, cellars, and Michelin tables. Reserve your place on A Taste of France and let our specialists arrange every last detail.
