Vranken Pommery domain — Attraction in Reims

I drove 2 hours from Paris for a tasting of two champagnes and an art exhibit! I thought the experience sounded fun, but after reserving tickets a week in advance and arriving, we were told our reservation wasn’t valid and had to pay 60€ rather than 30€ (which was what we were told on our reservation). After paying anyway because we had made the 2 hour drive to Reims, we received no guidance on where to go for our tour after asking 2 employees. We figured it out from walking around. We waited at the entrance of the exhibit and one employee asked what we were waiting for; after telling her we were waiting for the art exhibit, she said “oh okay,” and walked away. We just walked into the exhibit ourselves, walked around about 20 minutes (and couldn’t figure out where else to go as the path of our exhibit was not clear and we had nobody to guide us). We entered the grand room of Champagne Pommery Reims and asked an employee at the bar where our tasting takes place (he rudely waved us away because we spoke English). After finding a different employee, he told us we were supposed to go to some building across the property for the tasting and that we’d missed it. He poured us a small glass of the main champagne (not the Rose champagne that was promised by the tickets we paid for), and said that we weren’t allowed to get any of the champagne we were supposed to get from our tour because he had given us some from behind the bar. Overall, a very frustrating experience. I would not recommend for any non-native, let alone anybody. Save your money and go somewhere much cooler: Champagne de Castellane in the neighboring town, Epernay. It was a beautiful experience that made up for our poor one in Reims.

In addition, I asked an employee why I had to pay so much and she told me there was nothing she could do to help. After emailing the business directly almost a week ago, they still haven’t gotten back to me or my follow-up email. For such a beautiful and seemingly-renowned champagne house, it’s run...

This was definitely a highlight of the visit to Reims, and I thought I wasn’t going to be interested.

So I’m not a champagne drinker but I was with a group that was. “Let’s do a champagne tour they said” so begrudgingly tagged along.

How wrong I could have been, this place was fascinating! The Caves under the property are mind blowingly incredible… I am not exaggerating, they are sooo impressive.

You enter from the main hall and the stairs go down and down and down. You wonder round what is probably only about 1000th of the entire cave system and there are thousands of champagne bottles just brewing, your head can’t get round the sheer scale of this enterprise.

If that wasn’t cool enough they had an art exhibition on down there to, to be honest I would have been satisfied with just the cave tour.

Then you come up and head through the museum where they had another amazing exhibit, it’s the tour that keeps on giving.

At the end they give you a large glass of Champagne, not my favourite bit, but my gang seemed happy.

We then headed over to the house, this wasn’t as interesting to me, my head was still in those caves! At the end they give you another glass of Champagne.

I can highly recommend and if you can only do one part of it, do the Caves, I want to go back and see if I can’t get a bigger tour of the caves, apparently the level we looked around us just the first of 3… it goes...

This was the second of the two larger champagne houses we visited while in Reims and it did not disappoint! In fact, we really loved the quirky atmosphere. It made for an extremely memorable experience!

Also love that there's is plenty of free parking available right on site.

Our group booked the "Self-guided tour: Champagne and heritage," which cost 48 euro each and included two tastings. This was perfect! We got to walk through the cellars, which are full of modern art, as well as visit the attached museum. It may have been the glass of champagne we had beforehand, but the museum was a fantastic time! We especially loved the musical hanging plants that reacted to touch (pictured).

The second half of the adventure wasn't quite as exciting. The house tour is across the road, which took us some time to figure out...and not nearly as engaging as the cellar or museum. Still, it was interesting and we enjoyed our second glass of champagne there.

All staff members were incredibly kind and helpful. There was also lots of information available in English via handy printouts. Overall, this was a VERY memorable portion of our trip. We all highly...