Champagne Bollinger

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Champagne Bollinger

Champagne Cave

The Sunday Times Wine Club Valentine's Champagne

14 - 16 February 2009

Celebrate Valentine’s night with champagne in Champagne! This ideally timed weekend travels out to the region by 1st class Eurostar so that you can relax and watch the French countryside whizz past.

Spend Valentine’s evening at a gourmet dinner with plenty of excellent champagnes hosted at one of the highest quality houses such as Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. Next day we’ll serve you Champagne with your buffet breakfast, then take you out to the vineyards of the Montagne de Reims to meet up with one or two the Club’s smaller grower’s such as Champagne Jean-Noel Haton, Paul Goerg or Chateau de Bligny.

On the final morning, after another glass of champagne with your breakfast, there’ll be time to explore Reims, perhaps do a little shopping before our final lunch together. This will be with one of the most illustrious Houses of all, Champagne Bollinger in the Grand Cru village of Ay.

Champagne stretches from around Troyes in the south, to Reims in the north in the Marne. The vineyards here are the Montagne de Reims, the Côte des Blancs (where the white grapes are concentrated) and the Vallée de la Marne.

Reims, our base, is home to many of the great names in Champagne: Krug, Roederer, Clicquot, Mumm, Taittinger and Charles Heidsieck have their cellars here. It has a long and interesting history. It was important in the Latter Roman Empire and there are several monuments still in evidence, including a Triumphal Arch, the Forum and the stone quarries or crayères which these days are used as cellars by many Champagne Houses.