A week at the Champagne Academy: sixteen houses and rather a lot of Champagne

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Champagne many times, but the Champagne Academy is an entirely different proposition. Over the course of one very full week in June 2025, our group of Academicians followed a program involving sixteen Grandes Marques, with lectures, exams, cellar tours, vineyard visits, tastings, lunches and dinners packed in from morning until late at night. It was intense, occasionally excessive and absolutely brilliant.

The week began on the terrace of the Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa, where representatives from the houses had gathered to welcome us. Following a brief spell of rain, the sun appeared at exactly the right moment and, with views stretching across the vineyards below, it was difficult to imagine a better setting. Any initial nerves disappeared fairly quickly, and the evening certainly set the tone for what was to come.

Our first house visit was Perrier-Jouët, with a visit to its private residence on the Avenue de Champagne. The house is filled with Art Nouveau furniture and artworks, including pieces by Hector Guimard, best known for designing the distinctive entrances to the Paris Métro, and a rather casually placed Rodin in the living room. We then descended into the cellars before a detailed and informative tasting with Cellar Master Séverine Frerson. Lunch followed, accompanied by yet more Perrier-Jouët; it was an excellent start to the week.

Bollinger came next, including a visit to Clos des Chaudes-Terres. Given its reputation, I had imagined something much larger, but the parcel is unexpectedly small - a useful reminder that scale and significance are not always connected. We finished with a tasting that included La Grande Année Rosé 2015 before travelling to Bouzy for a vineyard visit with Heidsieck & Co. Monopole.

That evening’s Guinguette party was one of the week’s more unexpected highlights. There were straw hats, braces, polka dots, an accordion player and a picnic as the sun went down. It was wonderfully informal and gave everyone the chance to relax after the first day’s lectures and visits. Heidsieck & Co. Monopole also produced a few bottles of its 1985 vintage, which helped matters considerably.

By the second morning, the rhythm of the Academy had begun to establish itself. Most days started with an exam on the previous day’s lecture, usually following a rather hurried attempt to revise over breakfast. We'd then move directly into another lecture before climbing back onto the coach for a succession of visits, tastings and meals. The days were long and there was a remarkable amount of information to absorb, but it was a rare opportunity to spend an entire week concentrating on champagne without any of the usual distractions. The spittoons were always available, although perhaps not used quite as enthusiastically as they should have been...

Our first exam took place at Moët & Chandon, followed by a lecture on vineyards and the harvest. We then walked across Épernay to Pol Roger, which I had previously visited with The Oxford Wine Company. I already knew something of the house and its famously traditional approach, including the fact that its entire full-time riddling team consists of just four people - and that this is still more than any other champagne house. It remains one of those satisfyingly niche facts that stays with you.

A short but comprehensive tasting at Laurent-Perrier followed. The wines had a particularly bright, incisive acidity and a very clearly defined house style. They weren’t necessarily the champagnes I found myself most naturally drawn towards, but the precision and consistency across the range were impressive. One of the great benefits of the Academy was being able to consider the houses alongside one another; personal preference aside, there's always something to learn.

We returned to Moët & Chandon that evening for a tasting and dinner at their Résidence Trianon. Winemaker Marie-Christine Osselin was exceptionally generous with her time, answering a seemingly endless stream of questions and explaining the thinking behind the wines in considerable detail. The setting was spectacular, the meal excellent and everyone had made a noticeable effort to look presentable - something that became increasingly difficult as the week went on.

Our third day was originally due to begin at Ruinart. Tragically, Cellar Master Frédéric Panaïotis passed away unexpectedly that week, and the visit was understandably cancelled. The news was an enormous shock. At the closing lunch a few days later, we received our Champagne Academy certificates and discovered that he had already signed them. It was an especially poignant detail and a reminder of the individuals behind these historic houses.

The day instead began at Charles Heidsieck with an excellent tasting through the range with Elise Losfelt. As one of my favourite champagnes, it would have been difficult for the house to disappoint, but the visit comfortably exceeded expectations. Its vast chalk crayères are extraordinary, particularly the iconic bottle-shaped chamber hidden beneath Reims. Photographs struggle to convey the scale of it; standing inside is something else entirely.

Pommery was another surprise. The cellars are filled with contemporary installations, turning the ancient chalk tunnels into an underground art exhibition. It was modern, playful and completely unlike the more traditional cellar visits we had experienced elsewhere. The house was also extremely generous with its wines, including a double magnum of Cuvée Louise 2004. It was not an especially difficult afternoon.

There was also one entirely unsanctioned extension to the program. After dinner at Pommery, a slightly smaller - and perhaps overconfident - contingent continued to Curt’N Club, a local karaoke club. What followed is not one of the clearer memories of the week, although enough photographic evidence survives to confirm that it happened.

Day four began at Piper-Heidsieck with another exam, a lecture and a tasting of the range. It was a more technical and restrained visit than some of the others, with a useful focus on the structure and fruit-driven character that Pinot Noir brings to the house style. Following the previous night's shenanigans, a relatively straightforward morning was very much welcomed.

At Veuve Clicquot’s Hôtel du Marc, Louise Grillet led one of the most memorable tastings of the week. We began with still red base wines before tasting the corresponding rosé champagnes: Brut Rosé, Vintage Rosé and La Grande Dame Rosé. Tasting the component wines alongside the finished champagnes made it possible to see exactly what each base wine contributed to the final blend. It was a fascinating demonstration of how fruit, structure, colour and tannin are incorporated with remarkable precision, and one of those sessions that could never be replicated by reading about the process in a book.

And then came Krug. Annoyingly, it was every bit as good as everyone said it would be.

We began at the Loge Krug in Trépail before travelling into Reims to explore the house and its remarkable room containing hundreds of individual wines. The sheer number of components considered when creating each Édition gives some idea of the complexity involved.

What was perhaps more surprising was how technologically advanced the process has become. Krug has developed its own app for cataloguing the individual vats and reserve wines tasted by the cellar team. Descriptors are assigned to each wine, and once the Cellar Master has determined the characteristics required for the next Édition, the system can identify the 100 to 200 wines that most closely correspond and suggest a starting point for the blend.

It doesn't replace the judgement of the tasting team, of course, but it's an unexpectedly high-tech tool within a house so closely associated with tradition. Even the embroidered Loro Piana shawls offered to us suggested that Krug does not approach hospitality by halves.

Dinner was held at Olivier Krug’s private residence, where the chef from the three-Michelin-starred L’Assiette Champenoise cooked for us. The food, wines and setting were exceptional, but the evening remained surprisingly relaxed. It may be slightly controversial to admit it, but I think the dinner was even better than our closing lunch at L’Assiette Champenoise itself!

The final round of house visits began at Taittinger, where the cellars descend some 18 metres beneath the Saint-Nicaise site into a network of Gallo-Roman crayères. Seeing the familiar Comtes de Champagne insignia carved into the chalk felt particularly appropriate; the house’s flagship cuvée spends close to a decade ageing in these remarkable surroundings.

From there, we travelled to Verzenay for lunch with Lanson. A barbecue had been set up overlooking the vineyards, with the Moulin de Verzenay visible on the hill in the distance. The weather was perfect, the food was excellent and it was easily one of my favourite lunches of the week.

We then walked through the vineyards to that very windmill for a tasting with G.H. Mumm. There are worse ways to travel between champagne appointments, and tasting inside one of the region’s most recognisable landmarks made it particularly memorable.

Our final house was Louis Roederer. Drinks and canapés were served outside in the sunshine before dinner, which was all extremely civilised. Cristal 2016 paired with scallops was a particular highlight: precise, fresh and completely seamless with the dish. It was a superb pairing.

There was still the small matter of our final written exam and blind tasting the following morning, before the prize-giving and closing lunch at L’Assiette Champenoise. By that stage, everyone was tired, slightly overwhelmed and in possession of considerably more champagne knowledge than we had arrived with.

A program like this also requires someone to keep it moving. Our Chairman, Craig Bonner, somehow managed to keep a coach full of Academicians on schedule while ensuring that we had plenty of fun along the way. He also maintained a running calculation of the number of magnum-equivalent bottles of champagne consumed by the group over the course of the week. The final figure remains strictly confidential.

I didn’t leave the Academy with a dramatically changed opinion of champagne. Instead, I came away with a much deeper understanding of the region: the differences between the houses, the decisions behind the wines and the amount of work involved long before a bottle reaches the table.

I was also struck by the generosity shown throughout the week. The houses gave us access to their cellars, vineyards, wines and teams, answering an unreasonable number of questions and producing bottles that most of us would never otherwise have had the opportunity to taste.

I arrived thinking I knew champagne reasonably well. By the end of the week, it felt both more familiar and considerably more complex.