Paris to Reims & Champagne by private car — tastings, fixed price

Champagne is the day trip where a private driver stops being a convenience and becomes the point. The tasting is the reason you came, the houses are twenty-five kilometres apart, and French drink-drive limits are 0.5 g/l — roughly one glass. Hiring a car for this day is a mistake, and the train drops you in central Reims a long way from most of the vineyards.

Reims is one hour forty-five from Paris on the A4. Épernay, the second capital of Champagne, is another thirty minutes south through the Montagne de Reims. The fixed price covers the whole vehicle for the day, the tolls, the fuel and every hour the driver waits outside a cellar door.

Distance

145 km

Drive time

1 h 45 each way

Day length

10–11 h door to door

From

€550

Reims or Épernay — or both

Reims has the cathedral, the big names and the deepest cellars: the Roman chalk pits under Taittinger and Ruinart are a UNESCO site in their own right. Épernay has the Avenue de Champagne, a single street with more value stored under it than almost any road in France, and a more concentrated set of visits.

A day that takes in one house in Reims, lunch, and one house in Épernay is the standard and it works. If you want three tastings, drop the cathedral and add a grower in Hautvillers instead — the village where Dom Pérignon is buried and where the tastings are conducted by the person who made the wine.

Grande marque or grower?

The famous houses give you the spectacle: the cellars, the history, the branding, a flute or two of the standard cuvée at the end. Visits run to a schedule and must be booked ahead, sometimes weeks in high season.

The small récoltants-manipulants give you the opposite: a family cellar, four or five wines, an hour of conversation and bottles you cannot buy at home. Most of our clients now do one of each, which is the combination we would suggest if you asked.

The route between them is the nicest part

The road from Reims to Épernay through the Montagne de Reims — Rilly, Verzenay with its lighthouse in the vines, Bouzy, Aÿ, Hautvillers — is thirty minutes of grand cru hillside, and it is where the photographs happen. Coaches take the motorway. Ask your driver to take the D26 instead; it costs ten minutes and it is the reason to have a car at all.

What makes this journey different

• Grande marque cellars in Reims: Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, Pommery, Ruinart
• Épernay’s Avenue de Champagne and the Moët & Chandon galleries
• Small grower-producers in Hautvillers and Aÿ, where the tasting is one to one
• Reims cathedral, where 33 French kings were crowned
• Nobody in the group needs to stay sober

How the day runs

1. 08:30Pick-up in Paris

   From your hotel, apartment or CDG airport.

2. 10:15Reims

   Cathedral, then a cellar visit and tasting at one of the grande marque houses.

3. 12:45Lunch

   In Reims or in one of the vineyard villages on the way south.

4. 14:30The Montagne de Reims

   The D26 through Verzenay, Bouzy and Aÿ to Hautvillers.

5. 15:30Épernay

   The Avenue de Champagne and a second tasting, house or grower.

6. 19:00Back in Paris

   With whatever you bought, safely in the boot.

What the price includes

• The whole vehicle, not a seat: four people pay what one person pays.
• All motorway tolls and fuel, on both legs of the journey.
• Your driver’s waiting time at every stop, with no meter running.
• Parking charges at the sites you visit.
• Baby, child and booster seats, fitted free on request.
• Flight tracking and free waiting time if your plane lands late.
• Bottled water, phone chargers and Wi-Fi on board.
• A written invoice, issued by a licensed French VTC operator.

Frequently asked questions

Other journeys out of Paris