Champagne Travel Guide: What It’s Really Like to Visit

We headed to the Champagne region of France for a trip filled with tastings, cellars, and a few surprises. In this episode, we talk about our visits to Reims, Épernay, and Hautvillers, and which Champagne houses were actually worth touring. From Veuve Clicquot to Mercier’s kitschy train ride to sipping in the birthplace of Champagne, we share the highlights and what we’d skip next time. If you’re thinking about a Champagne trip (or just love wine), this one’s for you. Read more about Champagne here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome back. I'm Lisa. And I'm Erin. And this is the Getaways Podcast. We have a special guest today. Yay. Yay! My niece Megan is here. Say hello. Say hello to the people, Megan. Hello. Um, we have Megan with us today because we went on a four-day.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

She's also our neighbor now.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yes, she lives in the Netherlands now. She moved here about nine months ago. So we get to do all kinds of fun stuff together. But the last trip was to Champaign for four days. And your parents, my sister and brother-in-law, your mother and father, and another special guest. And my brother surprised us. Yay! It was a big surprise. Best surprise ever. Um, Champagne is its own region in France. Did you guys know that?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I didn't until I went there the first time.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I knew.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

You knew? Okay. I didn't also know that champagne could only be made in Champagne. So if there's a sparkling wine in California, you cannot call it Champagne. It is just for everything that's produced in the region. And the region is easy to get to. It's only 90 minutes away from Paris. So you could easily fly into Paris and either rent a car or take a train.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

The train, because the train's right in the center of Rome.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Um I would suggest having a car.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Because yeah, depending on where you stay, and then it gives you the freedom to go to whatever houses or whatever hikes or walks or areas you want to go to. Now, Aaron Dylan and I have been there several times previous to that trip. Yeah. So four or five times. Yeah. So we've stayed in Rheims. Rolls. Rolls, in outside of Eparnay, and we've stayed in Airbnbs and hotels. One of the hotels I actually really, really loved, and we our Airbnbs were great in both of those places. Yeah. And then this trip, we stayed just outside of like 30 minutes north of Reims, yeah. In a really lovely, big, huge country house.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah. We arrived on Sunday. And as you know from all of our trips, when we get somewhere on Sunday, nothing's ever open.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Nothing in France is ever open. Or Switzerland or Germany. And we have always nothing when we arrive.

unknown 2:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

So if you're gonna arrive places, arrive to the Netherlands because they do not celebrate Sundays. We did find like a um uh like a small version of a bigger supermarket that was open in Reims and they had champagne. So we were fine.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yeah, that's all we need. All worked out. All right, so should we jump into the meat of it and get to the houses? Let's do it. All right, so we went to the so let's start with the houses in Ronz. Okay. So it's Vove. Which we've done two different versions of tours there.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yes, we did the cheaper version the first time we went, and we did the more customized, a little bit more expensive version when we took Megan. That was so fun. And I would say go that that was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

That was like 84 euro a piece, I think. But how many tastings did we get? At least four. Yeah, I think there was four, if not five.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, it was four or five, and they were like good pores. Yeah, and we got to do the tastings down in the cellar versus the first time we went, we were up in the like little bar off of the registration area, like the office area.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it was a little longer. That tour was like an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

It was longer and it was more interactive, and it was more like for all your senses, which I really liked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

The caves were really impressive, yeah. And it was a nice, cool break. It was hot that day, and the caves were nice and cool. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

And Viv is just it's a good champagne. And it's a good story.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

If you don't know the the widow's story, look it up. She is just cool. She's like, it makes you want to it makes you want to drink her champagne because she's just so she was Yeah, look it up.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

I'll put something up on the on I'll put I'll put a link to a story about it. But she was a cool, nope, she was a cool broad. I'm not gonna put that on there.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

I changed it to broad. Um it's somewhere you have to go, I think, because A, the story is so good, the champagne is really good, and it's also just so well done.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yes, I agree, I agree. And then the other house in Reims that we've been to, I've been to once, you've been to twice. I think it's Megan's favorite, is Pomeray. It is Megan's Pomerie. I don't know how you would say it in France. I love that house. I love that champagne. Well, in completely different vibes.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Totally different vibes, right? Yeah. I felt like the Vouv tour was very, it was like a very polished tour.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

It felt very Louis Vuitton. It felt very Gucci, you know what I mean? It was very it's branded. Branded. And Pomerie's more like great champagne but cool vibe and great art.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah. Yeah. The cave tour had like different artists all along the way and different exhibitions. And I thought that was really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Well, and too, the difference was that we did okay, now I need to back up a little bit. We started planning this, the trip a long time ago, but we didn't actually book the house visits until probably late March, early April, and a lot was sold out, which is why we ended up with the fancy booth Cloco. Which thank goodness, but well, yeah, no, it was not not a bad thing, but it wasn't what we had anticipated. Correct. And the only tours available at Pomaray in English, which didn't matter, but were self-guided. So we could totally be on our own time schedule. We could wander through. There was one place where there was like butterflies hanging from the ceiling, and you could kind of like you could meander. Like you didn't need to stay with a group or you know, be paying attention to what somebody's telling you. It was just kind of an self-exploration, right? Um, that's my two cents. That's a good two cents. Pomere is more than two cents, though. It is, it is. Um, but definitely a totally different vibe. You still get like you go down in the caves, and that's where a lot of the art is.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

They have an elephant in the lobby that's like balancing on his trunk on a champagne glass, right? Or a champagne bottle. Yeah. I love Pomerie.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

I thought the cool thing about the Vouvetour was the old, like those caves have been used for millions different things, and like the old graffiti from like 50 years ago in there, or like the hospital sign from when they used those caves for other times. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's super historic.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

We got to hear his history versus other places we don't.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Well, and and Palmer, you don't get that aspect of it. Yeah. So I think even with those two, like, you know, going to different houses can be a totally different experience. You know, like it's they all have their own kind of signature and you know, vibe about them.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And now there's one other house in Reims that we've been to. We had didn't tour it, but we went to Runard.

unknown 7:02

Go to Renard.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

It's it the tours do they do tours or they do it.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, but they're like three gazillions.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

A lot of monies. And and they do lunches and dinners too, but it it's like$300 a person. But I would love to do that. Well, yeah because I love Renard, and I don't know if it's big in America, because I when I was growing up, everybody liked Dom Perignon, which I'm not knocking Dom Perignon, it's a great wine, champagne, and and cristal, which I don't think I'm fond of anymore. And then Vouvre was like the cheaper of the nice right. That's what we drank, right? And um and then California stuff, but which was not champagne, yes. So, but when we were in Bourguignon and Bon Bon, we went to a winemaker's house for a tasting, and he was telling us, he goes, uh where we we were on our way to champagne, right? I think so, yeah. And he said, he said, Renard's the best champagne, it's what all the French people drink. And we were like, What is Renard?

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Well, we want to be French.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah. And so we went to Renard, and you can get a bottle that has a little leather jacket on. And so that was my first bottle of Renard, it was with the little leather jacket. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Um, the property there is beautiful, beautiful. But we just went into like the little shop, little store, and then everybody was sitting having lunch outside for a million dollars a person.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

But I would suggest if you want to splurge, and it's not as much as Dom Perignon, so for the lunch and stuff? No, if you want to buy a bottle.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Oh, oh, oh.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

But I don't know what it is in America because it's not as expensive as Dom Perignon here in Europe. Right. It's like a nine, yeah,$90. And that's the cheapest. Blanc en blanc's the cheapest, but it's still fantastic. But if you want to splurge, I would you should try Renard. Right. I'm down with that. And you had Renard. We get that was your housewarming.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

That was my housewarming gift. It was so nice.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Should we do a little like just background of like what okay? So Blanc en Blanc means it's 100% Chardonnay. Okay. And then Blanc en noir.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

You're the wine expert, so you're gonna have to do all the background.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Means that it's a Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and Millie mix.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

So that means it's is Chardonnay a red grape as well?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

No.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

So it's green. It's a white grape.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Okay. Yeah. But all the when you open up a red grape, it's clear. It's white on the inside. So it's just how long the it macerated with the skin.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Okay. Um Lisa went to wine school, so she gets to educate us all. But I don't remember much.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Um and then there's brute, which is dry.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

And then semi don't get the demi sec, because I I always make the mistake and I get it. And it is it's like drinking syrup.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah, it's definitely desserty.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

It's a desserty wine. In fact, I just bought one today.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

On accident.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

So stick with uh stick with a brute. I like a rose. Oh yeah, rose. I forget about rose because I don't like it. Um but anyway, that's that's my just a little background on that. And let's move over to Eparnais.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Eparnay. We've only done one. I've only done one tasting in Eparnay. We've done two.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

So the big one is Mercier, which is also owned by Louis Vuitton. Right. Which we chose. That was our first tour. Did we do that before Vu? Yeah, because um we thought Dylan would like the train.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

You know who liked the train? This girl. This girl liked the train.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Um, but it's super cute because they have a train that goes all through the chalk tunnels, and you just get to kind of sit and relax. And it's my favorite kind of tour. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Vu was my favorite, probably, of like the tours, but I liked the train. I thought it was interesting. I thought the like chalk carvings and the art that they had through it was very again, just a very different experience, and like the history of that champagne house was different as well. So I thought it was interesting to see. I liked even the elevator ride down to the nice. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it was cool, it was well done.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, yeah, it's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

It's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, and it's at the very end of the route de champagne or the Avenue de Champagne. Avenue de Champagne. Um, the route is the drive that we did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah, we got cute pictures too, because it's at the end of the street. If you go like you can kind of walk up near some of the grapes and you have an explanation of the whole city and the hills around it, it was really pretty.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yeah, yeah. But that street, the Avenue de Champagne. It's fancy. It's a fancy, fancy street. It's like being on Rodeo Drive for champagne, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Moe and Chandon is there. And what else is there? Pierre Zone. Yeah, which I like.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Um I don't even remember what else.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Oh, at Moe and Chandon is where you would do the Dom Perignon tasting because there's no house that you can visit for Dom Perignon. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

His statue's in front of the Moe. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

I they must own it, right? Yeah. Okay. That's a big house. That's a huge house. Yeah. Which we haven't been in there. There was a line just to get in to have a glass.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Well, yeah, that's what I was was saying before. Like we thought a month was plenty of time to plan. It was not plenty of time to plan. So, like, if you want to go to like most houses, you're you got to get on it.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

And I guess it's just the same thing we say in almost every podcast we do is you've got to make reservations and you've got to plan way ahead on most of these places.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

And we were there in May. It wasn't like May 1st. It wasn't like we were there in the height of summer or spring break, yeah, or Christmas. You know, like it was just a rando, a rando weekend.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

How far in advance did we plan our first Pomerie tour? Because we had a tour tour, and that was the height of Silicon Valley. Well, it was also cold the first time we were there. No, Pomerie. We only did it once, and it was hot. It was on our way to Sicily one year. Oh, yeah. I don't know. And it was hot. No, it was on our way to Sardinia anyway.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Sardinia. Yeah. And that's when the caves are like the best. The best. Because you're so hot and then you go down there and it's just lovely. Um all right. What else in cities? We did the museum. We've all been to the museum, just not together.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah. So in Ronce, it's what's it called? The Our Airbnb.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Muse de Reddition.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Okay. So it's that. And our Airbnb was literally like a block away from it. And Lisa just saw it walking, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

No, I was, I wasn't, I was not feeling well that trip. And so I was just looking at things that were close that I thought I could do and then come home if I didn't feel good. And that was right down the street.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So she ended up not going, just Dylan and I went.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So this museum was where the Germans surrendered in 1945. And the war room is still set up exactly like it was there. There's still names on all the chairs. There's maps and like tracking of troops and war and I don't even, I mean, everything you can imagine. And then the there's exhibits all through the area, through the museum, of like what the lead up was and like the articles. And it was cool to see all the different languages of all the announcements of the German surrender. And yeah, it was cool.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

The different languages were cool. The different, yeah, the different news articles and the way that way that the headlines were written in each country were really interesting. And just the vibe of the room itself when you look and like how the chairs are set up and it was like two German chairs.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

And I remember just walking in and going, oh my God, how those two guys surrendering for an entire country for an entire war, like is just crazy. I mean, it's such a moment in history, right? And it's preserved, I want to say perfectly, but you know, I don't know exactly what it looked like then. But it doesn't look like anybody's really touched it since then, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's really cool. I would suggest going there. It's it's quick too. Like you're not there more than an hour.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. It's yeah, it's really quick. And one of my other favorite things about Rolms is the park. Oh, the parks are nice.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

It almost feels like it's where the whole town goes to congregate at night. For sure. There's places for kids to play, there's little bars, there's there's uh like splash pads. It's it's just really nice.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, and everybody's out there, yeah. And just and it's very well covered, so you get shade even when it's hot.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Or when it's raining.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah, exactly. We got caught in the rain so bad.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

We both looked at each other and then like hid under a tree. I it was literally like a crack of thunder, and then just the biggest downpour. And the trees really helped us out.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

It did, they definitely protected us. And when we were walking around the day that it rained really bad, there was a really cool Italian, very authentic like market, yeah. Oh, a street market? Yeah, right down the middle of that, like one of those main streets. And they had tons of good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

They had a lot, they had so many olives. Your mother had so many olives. Um, but no, they had a bunch of vendors for they had like really good meat, like from Italy, I think. Um, and there was a lady with like jewelry and like blown glass and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Oh yeah, like all handmade stuff and the carousel, they had uh oh, really? Yeah, they had a Sardinian booth, they had a Sicilian booth, like they had all kinds of stuff from all over. Yeah, and then the rain came down and they had to close up. Um but one other thing about the city there's great antique stores, great antique stores. Megan can attest to that.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

I got a gorgeous mirror.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

They had a lot of good stuff at that store though.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah, they really did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

But the cathedrals. So there's the main cathedral, which is beautiful, beautiful and completely worth seeing. Um, and then we went into um Saint Remy.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Is it the main cathedral Notre Dame?

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Yeah, it's called Notre Dame de Krams.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Reims.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Reims. Yeah, it's the Saint Remy Basilica. Yeah, which was also totally worth seeing. It was really pretty.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

It was really pretty. It was much older than I'd expected, and yeah, it was nice.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah, so definitely the Notre Dame and Saint Remy are worth a visit. And you know, we say this about a lot of places, but just walking around the city, there's good shopping, there's good food, there's good, like just stop and get a drink places.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

It's France. You can't go wrong, and you gotta try the butter when you're in France. I don't I don't know what else to say.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

I know I say you're gonna hear that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Every time I talk about France, France has the best butter.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

And then I think one last thing that we did not get to do together is the hiking through Hot Ville. There you go. Is that how you say it? Hotville.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Well, it's it it looks like it's Hot Viller, but it's French.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

I'm certain that's how you pronounce it.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

So you can that's where Dom Perignon his first house was. I don't know if it's still that's still where their house is and their vines, but that's the what's where he it was originally from.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Well, and he's definitely celebrated there. I mean definitely celebrated there. There's you know, everything's like his name and you know, statues and and like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

So there's there's you can park in this spot, the parking lot, and there's a whole hike that's easy to find. I'll put it on the website, but it's a whole hike through the town, then up through the vines, and then through a forest, and then back down. And it was an amazing, and it was the heat of summer, but we were covered a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

A lot of the time, yeah. And we tend to go early because we take the dog too.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

It was such a good hike.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

And I would go back and do that walk every trip if I could. Yeah, it was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Yeah, it just logistically didn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

But yeah, I I say go to Champagne, man.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah. I have some questions.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

I have some questions for Megan. Um, when I very first started going to France, like the first time I went to Paris, I was like, oh, I just don't know if it's for me, right? And so I would always say, Oh, I don't really like France to Lisa, and she's like, Ah, you don't know France. And so once I started going to France, I fell in love with France. Like, I love France as much as I love Italy now. Like, I love France. Did you love France?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

I didn't know much about France. I thought I had, because I'd like been to Paris a couple of times, and I was like, Oh, yeah, it's fine. Like, it's beautiful, but I don't know if it's for me kind of the same, like similar.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

But you never like thought about I'm on a vacation in France.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yeah, I never really thought, yeah, it was always just like a stop to somewhere else. And this was, yeah, this changed my mind. France is good, isn't it? France is good.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Okay. I have questions for both of you. If you could only drink one champagne for the rest of your Life, which would it be? I know you don't really like champagne.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

I do not, but I'm gonna say Pierre Joel. Oh, because oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I want to go to that house so bad.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Um, okay, mine would be the Pomerie Donc du Noir. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Renard. All right, for sure. And do you guys want to go back to Champagne? Yeah. Tomorrow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Long weekend coming back. I feel like as a first timer, the long weekend, I needed an extra day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Okay, so Vuv Cloco was your favorite house.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah, that was my favorite tour for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yeah, I think Voo. I don't need to do that again. Like, I think I would only now do uh tours I haven't done.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Right. Right. And there's a lot. One thing I will say about Vuv Cloco is that we tried to go to the cafe, which is really adorable and cute and quite affordable.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And we were told we didn't need reservations. We they don't take reservations.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

So, you know, it might be worth eating there and it's easy if it's if there's room for you, but um report back because we were curious we wanted to eat there and it didn't work out.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

So what I will say practical stuff, it's easy to drive and champagne, it's easy to park. There's plenty of parking and ROMs.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

All right. So that's that's what we're saying. Go to Champagne. Thanks for coming and doing this with us, Megan. Thanks for inviting me. Well, we will invite you again. Do you know what we're gonna go do now, people? We're gonna go pop a bottle of pomerade and uh and make some cocktails. But anyway, thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, like, and review.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

And check out the website www.thegetaways with a Z dot com. Cheers. Bye. Bye. Say bye, man. Oh, bye.