Reims

Champagne house cellar visit

Reims sits above kilometres of chalk cellars (crayères) used for ageing Champagne, some Roman or medieval in origin.

Houses such as Taittinger, Pommery, Ruinart and Veuve Clicquot age their wine in these cellars because the chalk holds a near-constant cool temperature and humidity year-round, without mechanical cooling. Pommery's crayères are former Gallo-Roman chalk quarries later linked into a single network; Ruinart's are recognised by UNESCO alongside other Champagne sites. A visit typically covers how the base wine is blended, the second fermentation that creates the bubbles, and riddling and disgorgement, ending in a tasting.

Wendelse tip: Cellar tours generally need booking ahead, especially in summer and around the year-end period.

Champagne — grape and style

The three permitted grapes and the difference between non-vintage, vintage and blanc de blancs.

Champagne is made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, usually blended across several years to keep a house style consistent — this is what "non-vintage" or NV means, not a lesser wine. A vintage Champagne is made entirely from grapes of a single strong year and only declared when the harvest justifies it. Blanc de blancs is made only from Chardonnay; blanc de noirs from the black grapes alone, pressed off their skins before colour transfers.

The dosage level on the label — brut, extra brut or the rarer brut nature — which states how much sugar was added at the final stage and ranges from bone-dry to noticeably sweeter.

Biscuit rose de Reims

A pale pink, twice-baked, sugar-crusted biscuit designed to be dunked in Champagne.

Made by the Fossier bakery since the 18th century, the biscuit was originally baked twice to use the receding heat of wood-fired ovens after bread, which is why it is dry and light rather than soft. The pink colour comes from added carmine or food colouring rather than any pink ingredient, and the vanilla-sugar crust means it doesn't turn soggy when dipped in a glass of Champagne, which is its traditional use.

Jambon de Reims

A cooked, pressed ham coated in breadcrumbs and parsley, sliced cold.

The ham is poached, pressed into a compact shape, then rolled in a mix of fresh breadcrumbs and chopped parsley (persillé) before being sliced thin. It's typically served cold as a starter or in a sandwich, and its parsley coating is what distinguishes it from a plain cooked ham elsewhere in France.

Chaource

A soft, bloomy-rind cows'-milk cheese from the southern edge of the Champagne region.

Made in and around the town of Chaource in the Aube, this AOC cheese is thick, creamy and mild when young, developing a runnier texture and stronger flavour as it ages. It's traditionally paired with Champagne itself, since both come from the same wider region — the cheese's acidity and cream work against the wine's dryness and bubbles.

Pain d'épices de Reims

A dense honey-and-spice bread, historically linked to Reims alongside Dijon.

Reims had its own pain d'épices-making guild from the medieval period, distinct from — and a long-running rival to — the more famous Dijon version. It is made with rye flour, honey and spices such as aniseed and cinnamon, left to mature before baking, giving it a moist, dense crumb rather than the lighter texture of a cake.

Notre-Dame Cathedral

Start with the west front, but don't treat it as a giant stone picture.

At Reims, sculpture is integrated deeply into the architecture. Figures occupy portals, jambs and galleries so thoroughly that the boundary between building and sculpture starts to disappear.

Then go inside. The height and light are what you expect from a major Gothic cathedral, but the windows complicate the chronology. Medieval glass survives alongside much later work, including twentieth-century windows by Marc Chagall. That coexistence is very Reims. Finally, remember the roof above you. After the destruction of the First World War, architect Henri Deneux reconstructed the roof using reinforced concrete rather than simply reproducing the lost timber structure. The cathedral looks old because it is old. It survives because later generations were prepared to build into it.

Look for: Sculpture behaving as part of the façade rather than objects placed against it.

Saint-Remi

Saint-Remi gives you a different Reims.

The former abbey church developed from a much older religious foundation and preserves fabric of different periods. Compared with the cathedral's concentrated vertical drama, it feels broader, quieter and more cumulative.

That difference matters. Reims' religious architecture isn't one Gothic moment repeated twice. Saint-Remi has been altered and extended across centuries, carrying the city's earlier association with Saint Remi and French royal anointing into a building that visibly accumulated history. Give it enough time for the cathedral to stop being your reference point.

The city around the monuments

This is the unusual Don't Miss. Walk away from Notre-Dame and look at the ordinary city.

The First World War devastated much of Reims, so the streets surrounding its medieval monuments contain restored older buildings, post-war reconstruction and later architecture side by side.

Don't expect every façade to announce which category it belongs to. The important thing is the contrast between the apparently timeless monument and a city that had to rebuild around it. Reims is not a medieval city preserved under glass. It is a city that reconstructed itself while deciding which pieces of its past had to return.

The cathedral is older than the roof above it

Reims is a good place to abandon the idea that authenticity means every surviving piece must be original.

Notre-Dame is genuinely medieval. Its sculpture, plan and much of its fabric belong to that history. It is also a building profoundly marked by destruction and reconstruction.

Stand inside and hold both ideas at once. The restoration didn't erase the cathedral's history. It became another part of it. Then take that thought outside. Much of Reims asks the same question at city scale: after catastrophic destruction, how do you rebuild without pretending nothing happened?

The façade is architecture and sculpture at once

Don't try to identify every saint.

Instead, watch how figures occupy the building: around doors, beneath arches, across galleries and within the depth of the portals.

The sculpture isn't a decorative layer added after the architecture. It helps make the façade.

Old glass and new glass can share the same building

Cathedrals accumulate.

At Reims, surviving medieval stained glass sits within a building that has also commissioned modern work.

Rather than deciding which period you prefer, notice how differently colour and figure behave when centuries of glass occupy the same Gothic structure.