The best MTB trails around Villers-Sous-Châtillon

A whole row of statues along the Marne, although they are slowly due for a new coat of paint

Some of the buildings are monumental and an expression of capital - but even the small winemakers have very good champagnes to offer that are in no way inferior to the big houses!

Nice seating area in front of the café. A friendly host. ...and a pleasant Brut Champagne.

A very beautiful metal installation that shows the activities of the winemaker.

In 2011[9], the idea for the current Museum of Champagne and Regional Archaeology was born. The project was approved by the French Ministry of Culture in 2014, and in 2016 the renovation work was entrusted to the architectural firm Frenak + Jullien. Work began in 2018, under the supervision of the chief architect of historical monuments Lionel Dubois. Château Perrier has now been restored and contains one of the most important archaeological exhibits in France, with some 80,000 regional artefacts (dating from the Paleolithic to the Early Middle Period) and 4,000 artefacts relating to the history of Champagne wine (since 1960).[10]

The Château Perrier, at number 13, was built from 1852 to 1857[9] by the architect Pierre-Eugène Cordier, in an eclectic Louis XIII style. In 1854[10], the couple Pierre-Nicolas Perrier, a cork manufacturer, and Adèle Jouët (the founders of the Perrier-Jouët champagne house), who had married in 1811, commissioned the construction of this castle. The four facades are inspired by the architecture of the French Renaissance, to the Parisian image of the Palais du Luxembourg, the Palais des Tuileries or the Lescot of the Louvre. The facades are a play of colours with materials such as brick, natural stone, slate and glass.

In his day, the fermentation of wine in the bottle, which produces sparkling wine, was a huge problem for winemakers. When colder weather arrived in autumn, the fermentation process would sometimes halt before all the fermenting sugar in the wine had been converted into alcohol. If this wine was bottled at this stage, it literally became a time bomb. When the weather warmed in spring, the remaining yeast would begin to work again, producing carbon dioxide, which would at least force the cork out of the bottle and often cause the bottle to explode, setting off a chain reaction in nearby bottles. This posed a danger to workers and sometimes destroyed an entire year's worth of wine production.[citation needed] Dom Pérignon sought to prevent this imperfect fermentation and introduced several improvements that are still in use in the Champagne region today, such as the extensive blending of wines from different winemakers.

Pierre Pérignon (Sainte-Menehould, 1639 - Hautvillers, 24 September 1715) known as Dom Pérignon was a Benedictine monk to whom the méthode champenoise, the method of making champagne, is often attributed. The best champagne of the Moët et Chandon winery is also named after him: champagne Dom Pérignon. Legend has it that he exclaimed: "Come quickly, I'm tasting the stars!" when he tasted the first sparkling champagne. The reality is, however, that although the Dom worked tirelessly to improve the wines of the Champagne region, he invented neither sparkling wine nor champagne.