Photographers in Reims & the Champagne vineyards

Reims gives a photographer two very different afternoons. The first is the cathedral: Notre-Dame de Reims, where the kings of France were crowned, a gothic west front so deep in carved figures that it changes character with the hour. Late afternoon light comes across the parvis and rakes the portals; the east end, seen from the garden behind, is a thicket of flying buttresses against open sky and is almost always empty. A few streets away the Palais du Tau and the basilica of Saint-Remi carry the same stone with none of the visitors, and the Villa Demoiselle on Boulevard Henry Vasnier adds a complete Art Nouveau house, wrought iron and stained glass, in the champagne-house quarter. The second afternoon is the vineyard. The Montagne de Reims begins about twenty minutes south of the city — Verzenay with its windmill on a bare knoll of vines, Verzy, Trépail, Ambonnay, chalk slopes striped with rows and a long view over the plain. Épernay, another twenty-five minutes on, has the Avenue de Champagne: a straight kilometre of nineteenth-century champagne houses behind gates and clipped hedges, with the cellars running under the road. Timing is simple. May to early October is the vine in leaf; the last ten days of September into early October give the harvest and gold leaves; November to March is bare stems and often grey. Nothing on the avenue or in the cellars can be shot commercially without asking the house first, and the cathedral asks that a session stays out of services — both worth checking a week ahead rather than on the morning.