Five bedrooms, on a street where the neighbours count their stock in millions. Épernay's Avenue de Champagne has been UNESCO-listed since 2015 and the great houses line it one after another, cellars running deep into the chalk below. Behind one of the doors, though, is a family townhouse rather than a monument: 18th-century bones, a fire in the hall, and a walled garden at the back that comes as a genuine surprise given what's on the other side of the building. The furniture the previous owners left behind has been kept and set against newer pieces. The wine house attached went biodynamic decades before anyone else in the region thought it sensible, and the tastings are correspondingly unhurried. Grand address, small house.
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Some 450 square metres across three reception rooms, so there's always somewhere to sit that nobody else is sitting in. Mornings are the drawing room and the fire in the lobby; afternoons are the garden terrace, walled and planted and surprisingly quiet given what's on the other side of the front door. The boutique is done out in wood and marble, and the full Leclerc Briant range can be tasted there without anyone hurrying you along. Breakfast is continental and taken indoors in a properly lovely room.
Five, numbered rather than named, and no two alike. The pair up in the eaves have the low beams and odd angles you'd want from the top floor of an old house, whilst those below are squarer and more formal, with the previous owners' pieces worked in amongst the new. Ask for one at the back if you'd rather look at the garden and the vineyards beyond than the Avenue, though the Avenue is hardly a punishment. One has a separate lounge and takes a third guest, and another is set up for a family. It's an old house, so expect stairs and no lift.
Book the private winery tour and you'll see the press room, the barrel house, the cellars, and La Croisette, a small plot that's been farmed biodynamically since it was planted. Down in the cellar, among the oak you'll find terracotta eggs, a sandstone vessel, a titanium barrel and a steel one lined with two microns of 24-carat gold. Then there's Abyss, which spends about 15 months ageing 60 metres under the Atlantic off the Breton island of Ouessant and comes back up with barnacles on the bottle. Moët & Chandon and Perrier-Jouët are both a few minutes' walk, and Reims is half an hour by car.
Abyss Champagne on the garden terrace, barnacles still on the bottle, while the Avenue does its grand thing on the other side of the house.
The winery tour runs by prior reservation only, so ask when you book rather than on arrival. The whole house can also be taken privately for up to ten, with a chef brought in, which is a very good way to do a big birthday.
There's no restaurant, so dinner means going out every night. Not a hardship in Épernay, where Les Berceaux is an eight-minute walk, but worth knowing if you'd pictured wandering downstairs in your slippers.
Le 25bis by Leclerc Briant can be booked with Timbuktu as part of a tailor-made France trip, rather than as a standalone room reservation. Start online, customising one of our recommended France trips featuring Le 25bis by Leclerc Briant or get advice and suggestions from one of our France specialists who will design the trip around your dates, check availability and handle every booking for you.
Stays at Le 25bis by Leclerc Briant start from around $280, or US$280, per person per night as part of a tailor-made trip. The exact price depends on your travel dates, room type and the shape of the rest of your itinerary. A Timbuktu travel specialist can give you an accurate quote for your dates.
Roman chalk pits thirty metres down, a cathedral that crowned kings on the ground above, and several hundred million bottles quietly improving in between.
