Champvoisy

Champvoisy is not one of the names that crop up on champagne labels. If you want to explore Champagne away from the big addresses, here is a village where farming and winegrowing shape everyday life. The village carries no Grand Cru or Premier Cru classification.

Location

The commune lies in the west of the Marne département, on the border with the Aisne département and therefore with the Hauts-de-France region. It belongs to the Tardenois and is counted as part of the western edge of the Montagne de Reims. By road it is about 37 kilometres to Reims, 31 kilometres to Épernay and roughly 7.5 kilometres to Dormans, whose canton Champvoisy belongs to. The commune covers 920 hectares, with altitudes ranging from 120 to 229 metres.

The village itself sits at around 140 metres in a valley, where the Champvoisy stream, a tributary of the Semoigne, meets the Bach des Parks. Added to this is the higher hamlet of La Chapelle Hurlay to the south. Many more houses are scattered across small outlying hamlets.

Landscape and viticulture

Typical of the Tardenois are wooded hilltops, steep slopes and hollows where arable farming is carried out. The vines grow on the slopes. According to 2018 data, however, viticulture is only part of the picture:

“Of the 106 main residences built before 2019, a good third date from before 1919.

• Arable land: 54.1%
• Forest: 22.3%
• Permanent crops, which include the vineyard areas: 5.1%

The climate is temperate oceanic. At the nearest weather station in Chambrecy, 15 kilometres away, the annual mean is 10.7°C and rainfall is about 734 millimetres. For the wine, that means cool summers, fresh vintages and ripeness won with effort. It is exactly this tension that makes champagne from marginal sites interesting for the curious.

What to see

The village is small, with 252 inhabitants (as of 2023), and quiet. Its built heritage includes:

Besserat de Bellefon Champagner Historie

• the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité
• the war memorial
• the wash house (lavoir)

The older houses are mostly built of limestone, sandstone or millstone grit and have two storeys. Of the 106 main residences built before 2019, a good third date from before 1919. There are strikingly many second homes, which points to the area's value as a place to unwind. The countryside is also worth a walk: parts of several ecologically important woodland areas extend into the commune, and the Petit Étang, a three-hectare pond, rounds off the landscape.

For lovers of good things

Champvoisy works well as a stop on a drive through the western Marne valley and along the edge of the Montagne de Reims. Anyone passing through can see the setting from which grower champagne is made away from the famous sites: forest, slope, valley and vines in between. Reims and Épernay are each a little over half an hour away by car, so a visit combines nicely with a tasting in one of the two cities.