An Oenophile's Guide to Champagne, France—the Birthplace of French Sparkling Wine

A labyrinth of ancient chalk cellars stretches for miles beneath the surface of the Saint-Nicaise Hill, forming a subterranean city of sorts below Reims, France’s coronation capital where 33 kings were crowned as far back as 816 AD. The former quarries, underground cathedrals soaring as high as a hundred feet, were the precursor to Champagne’s cellars—and in fact, these pitch-black, naturally temperature-controlled crayères (chalk quarries) are where some of the leading maisons (Champagne houses) in Reims, including Ruinart and Taittinger, age and store tens of millions of bottles of bubbles today. In the decade since UNESCO placed the region’s vineyard-blanketed hillsides, champagne houses, and cellars—which include les crayères—on its World Heritage List, Reims has become more than a day trip from Paris. Overnight stays have risen by 60 percent, now reaching more than 1.8 million, thanks to the influx of plush new hotels, restaurants, and champagne houses and smaller domaines offering experiences that go beyond a typical tasting. “The region has now become a lot more open than it used to be,” says Mathieu Roland-Billecart, CEO and seventh-generation owner of Cha