Midnight to Midnight
Veuve Clicquot and Pommery, Reims · Sunday 4 October 2026
I was early for Veuve Clicquot, and when you're early in Reims there's only one thing to do, right? So I had a glass of Champagne in their restaurant before I went in.
Veuve Clicquot was a bit commercial but it was very well done, and I had a really amazing time. The tour starts underground in the crayères, the old chalk pits, which were dug out by hand and hauled up through little vents you can still see above you. That chalk built the houses and walls of Reims. Now it's a maze of cellars sitting at 10 to 12 degrees all year round, and if you walked the whole thing it would be about 24 kilometres. Every crayère has a number, and some have a little plate with a name. Any employee who worked for the house for 40 years earned a plate of their own.
Then came the history of the house. It was founded in 1772 by Philippe Clicquot, a banker and textile trader, and the very first order was 60 bottles of sparkling wine written into the book next to the textile samples, heading straight to Venice. Back then bottles travelled naked with no label, and the only way to know one was real was to open it and look under the cork for the logo, an anchor with the letters C, M and F. I'd taken a photo of that stamp in a display case, and now I know what it is.
Then there's Madame Clicquot. Her husband François died in 1805 and left her a widow at 27. At the time the only way a woman in France could take over a company was to be a widow, and veuve means widow. It isn't her name, it's the title that let her take charge. She went on to come up with vintage Champagne and the riddling table, drilling holes into a wooden table so the yeast could slide down into the neck of the bottle. Terri, our guide, called her the first businesswoman of France.
Before the tasting there was a short film projected onto the walls, with the aromas of each grape coming out of the barrels. Red berries for Pinot Noir, citrus for Chardonnay and peach for Meunier. Then Terri said that all of this is very subjective, we each have our own palate, and if you find your own aromas that's absolutely normal. That's very close to what I say at my own tastings. Wine is subjective, and I loved hearing it from a house like Veuve Clicquot.
The tasting was four Champagnes: the Brut, the Extra Brut Extra Old with less sugar and fewer bubbles, the 2019 Vintage with 6 grams of sugar, which was my favourite, and the 2015 Vintage Rosé. Terri described one of them as "a midnight to midnight Champagne", which went straight into my notes.
He also showed us the whisper of Champagne. You take off the foil and there's Madame Clicquot on the cap, so you say bonjour to her. Then off comes the wire cage, and with 6 bars of pressure in that bottle, about double a car tyre, you ease the cork out gently so it lets out a soft whisper instead of a loud pop. It is the most respectful way to open a bottle.
And then there's the staircase, where every step has a vintage on it, starting at 1899 at the bottom and climbing up through the years. You can't walk past it without taking a photo, and I took a few.
After the tasting I stumbled across a very swanky restaurant for lunch and sat outside under the trees with a glass of Drappier Carte d'Or Extra Brut and a beautiful vegetable dish served in a little Staub pan.
Pommery
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Pommery 〰️
Then it was on to Pommery. I thought it was family owned, and it turns out it belongs to the Vranken group, a big family company that bought it from LVMH back in 2002. I wasn't so impressed. It was all very commercial, although the artwork was pretty awesome. Then I went through the house for the historical visit. I'm not really a history person, and while it was interesting, everything was just on show. It wasn't lived in. The historic house had been built for show, and that didn't sit right with me.
Two big Champagne houses in one day and I was brain dead by the end of it.