Speed east from Paris on train to Champagne

By Jenny Barchfield

updated 8:21 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2007

REIMS, France - After a Paris breakfast of cafe and croissant, how about lunch and a glass of bubbly in France's Champagne region?

Thanks to a new high-speed train line, Reims, the ancient heart of Champagne country is now just 45 minutes from Paris — less time than it takes to cross the French capital during rush hour.

Running at up to 200 mph, France's network of bullet trains — known as the TGV, or Train a Grande Vitesse (high-speed train) — is shrinking the country. Its newest line, the TGV Est, puts eastern France on the daytrippers' map, slashing travel times to the line's 30-plus destinations in eastern France and Germany.

The previous 90-minute trip to Reims has been cut by half. Colmar, a picture postcard town in another famed French wine region — Alsace, on the German border — is now three hours from Paris, down from nearly five hours before.

Shiny and sleek with their pointed, aerodynamic noses, the TGV lives up to its name. As it leaves Paris, the train picks up speed and landscapes dissolve into blurry, impressionistic patches of color. Gliding silently along, you almost feel like you're flying, soaring low over the plains that give way, eastward, to gently rolling hills.

Bubbly is a way of life
Though you can't see the Champagne region's famous vineyards from the train as you arrive in Reims, the drink's enormous influence on the city is immediately palpable: More than an occasional, celebratory beverage, here bubbly is a way of life.

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Decorative bunches of stone grapes adorn the stately bourgeois mansions in the historic center, and architectural details on City Hall and even the famous cathedral of Reims — where generations of French monarchs were anointed — pay homage to the sparkling wine.

Reims is the headquarters for many of France's main Champagne houses, including luxury labels Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart and Pommery. Most labels offer tours of their cellars with English-speaking guides several times a day.

Clustered in the residential neighborhoods south of the city center — a good 45-minute walk from the train station — the best way to get to the cellars is by taxi.

I visited Taittinger, founded in 1930 by entrepreneur Pierre-Charles Taittinger. Among the youngest of the major labels, the Taittinger cellar is built on the meandering corridors of a Roman chalk mine and dates from the 4th century. Vestiges of the mine — and an abbey built in the 13th century by Champagne-making monks — can be seen in Taittinger's 66-foot-deep cellar, which holds some 3 million bottles of bubbly.

Cellars and churches
While in the cellar-filled southern part of town, be sure to swing by Saint Remi Basilica, an 11th century church that holds the remains of the city's most celebrated native son, Remi of Reims, a 5th century archbishop credited with converting France to Catholicism.

It was Remi who baptized the barbarian Clovis, the Franks' first king, around A.D. 498 in Notre Dame de Reims cathedral. For a millennium, nearly all French monarchs followed in Clovis' footsteps, holding their coronation ceremonies in the cathedral.

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Rebuilt in the 12th century after a devastating fire, the cathedral represents French Gothic architecture at its riotous, exuberant best, with intricately carved sculptures that cover the inside and out, bursting from the limestone surfaces.

The Germans heavily bombed the cathedral during World War I, knocking hundreds of sculptures off the walls and destroying many of the arched stained-glass windows.

Russian-born French artist Marc Chagall designed replacement panels, depicting Old Testament scenes and the coronation of several French kings in light, bright stained glass. Installed in 1971, Chagall's hallmark dreamy, curling figures never looked so ethereal as in this holy site.

Another panel pays homage to Champagne, depicting workers making the drink, step by laborious step.

Many of the sculptures damaged during WWI found their way to the Palais du Tau, a former archbishop's residence next door that has been converted into a museum. As well as giving a unique, close-up view of the sculptures, it also houses a rich collection of paraphernalia used in regal coronations.

A host of restaurants around the cathedral serve up delectable local dishes like "pied de porc," or pig's foot, a traditional specialty that washes down well with — surprise, surprise — a glass of Champagne.

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