These chalk galleries, thirty meters below Reims, house the pupitre where Antoine de Müller first developed remuage for Madame Clicquot in 1816. The temperature holds steady at eleven degrees—perfect for slow, secondary fermentation. Watch the light catch thousands of bottles in their wooden racks, each turned a precise eighth daily.
Included in all tour options. Photography permitted in designated areas only.
A recreation of the Widow's personal tasting room, complete with her original desk and the ledgers that tracked her revolutionary techniques. Here she developed the first vintage champagne in 1810 and the first rosé d'assemblage. The space feels intimate, almost domestic—until you remember she was running an empire from this chair.
Access varies by tour level. Premium experiences include extended time here.
Where tradition meets precision. Watch the dégorgement process—that split second when frozen sediment shoots from the bottle neck. The line processes 40,000 bottles daily during peak season, each one touched by hands that understand the weight of Veuve Clicquot's reputation.
Operating Monday-Friday. Best viewing times are 10am-3pm.
Planning your visit? Find the champagne that matches your moment there.
Find your Champagne moment →Ninety minutes in the caves with a chef de cave, including access to Madame Clicquot's private spaces and a tasting of three expressions: Brut, Rosé, and a vintage from the house library. Groups limited to twelve. The sommelier explains not just what you taste, but why—the soil differences between Ay and Ambonnay, the effect of wood versus steel on structure.
Two blocks from the caves, this brasserie serves proper Champenois cuisine without tourism markup. The andouillette arrives properly grilled, the boudin noir rich with local blood. Owners understand that visitors need sustenance, not performance.
Villa Demoiselle — This Art Nouveau mansion, once home to champagne merchant Paul Pommery, offers four suites within walking distance of major houses. The period details feel authentic rather than recreated—original mosaic floors, hand-painted ceiling frescoes. Breakfast includes local honeys and house-made confiture.
Where. 1 Place des Droits de l'Homme, 51100 Reims — a walk of roughly twenty minutes from Reims Centre station, or a short taxi. The entrance is not the grand nineteenth-century Hôtel du Marc, which is the house's residence and not open to the public.
Booking. Online, in advance, and earlier than feels necessary. Visits are timed and capped, English departures are fewer than French ones, and weekends in summer and the whole of the harvest go first. Turning up without a reservation is the reliable way to see the gate and not the cellars.
How long. Allow around ninety minutes for a standard visit including the tasting; longer for the vintage and prestige formats, which open older wines and spend more time below ground.
Underground. The crayères sit some tens of metres down and hold around 10 °C throughout the year, with stairs at both ends. Take a layer even in August, and wear something you can walk on damp chalk in.
Cost. Priced by what is poured rather than by the walk — a standard visit finishing on Yellow Label sits well below one that ends on La Grande Dame. Check the current formats when booking; the house revises them.
The visit is mostly walking and listening, and the walking is the point. You descend into the Gallo-Roman chalk pits, follow galleries lined with bottles resting sur lattes, and come up at the end into a tasting room. Guides cover Barbe-Nicole's story, the riddling table she developed around 1816, and the mechanics of the second fermentation happening in the bottles beside you.
Photography is generally permitted in the cellars; flash and tripods usually are not. The galleries are dimly lit by design — light is one of the things a cellar exists to keep out.
If you have already booked one grand house in Reims and are choosing a second, note that the crayères are common to several of them. What differs is the wine at the end and the story told on the way down. Clicquot's is the strongest story of the lot.
A cellar visit occupies a morning or an afternoon, not a day, and Reims gives you somewhere to put the rest of it. The cathedral is the obvious anchor — French kings were crowned in it for something close to a thousand years, and its scale explains why the city had the wealth and the traffic to become a wine capital in the first place. It is a walk of a few minutes from most of the cellar entrances.
The crayères themselves have a second history worth knowing before you go down. During the First World War, with Reims under bombardment and much of the city above ground destroyed, people lived in these chalk galleries — schools, workshops and hospitals ran underground for months at a time. Some of the inscriptions cut into the walls date from then rather than from the quarrymen.
If you want more than one house in a day, our guide to Reims sets out which cellars sit within walking distance of each other and where to eat between them.
Can you visit the Veuve Clicquot cellars in Reims?
Yes. The house runs guided visits of its crayères at 1 Place des Droits de l'Homme in Reims, ending with a tasting. Visits are by advance booking only and are capped in size; the Hôtel du Marc next door is the house residence and is not part of the tour.
How do I book a Veuve Clicquot tour?
Through the house's own reservation system, well ahead of your visit. English-language departures are fewer than French ones and fill first, and September — the harvest — is the hardest month of the year to get into any Reims cellar at short notice.
How long does the cellar visit take?
Around ninety minutes for a standard visit, including the walk underground and the tasting at the end. Formats built around vintage or prestige cuvées run longer. Leave a clear two hours in the day rather than booking a train immediately afterwards.
What should I wear in the crayères?
A layer more than the street requires. The chalk cellars hold about 10 °C all year, so in summer you are stepping down some fifteen degrees. There are stairs at both ends and the floors are damp chalk — flat shoes with grip, not new suede.
Is Veuve Clicquot worth visiting compared with other Reims houses?
If you are visiting one house in Reims, it is a strong choice: the crayères are among the largest, and the history — a widow taking over in 1805 and inventing the riddling table — carries the tour in a way that a recitation of production figures does not. If you are visiting two, pair it with a smaller producer rather than a second grande maison, since the cellars themselves are similar across the city.
Can I get to the cellars from Paris in a day?
Comfortably. Reims is around forty-five minutes from Gare de l'Est by TGV, and the cellars are a walk or short taxi from the station — see our day trip from Paris to Champagne for how to build the rest of the day around a booked visit.