Essoyes

Essoyes lies in the south of Champagne, about 50 kilometres south of Troyes. The village nestles against the Ource, a tributary of the Seine. With 708 inhabitants (as of 1 January 2023) it has stayed small. Since its days as the chief town of its canton, it has belonged to the Petites Cités de Caractère, a network of small towns and villages with a special heritage. Essoyes is not a grand cru or premier cru village, but it is a typical village of the Côte des Bar.

Location and viticulture

The Côte des Bar lies at the very southern edge of Champagne, where the growing area meets Burgundy. Essoyes sits right in the middle of this landscape. Around 58 per cent of the commune's land is forest, and a good 21 per cent is given over to permanent crops, which in this area means mainly vines. Viticulture shaped the village for a long time, and several mills on the Ource provided a second livelihood. If you want to get to know Champagne away from the big cities of Reims and Épernay, this is a rural, quiet counterpart.

History

The banks of the Ource were already settled in Celtic times. Written traces of the village appear from the 11th century, when the church belonged to the Abbey of Molesme. From the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 18th, papermaking was added to the local economy. On 12 March 1763 a fire destroyed most of the half-timbered houses, and only a few stone buildings survived. The Romanesque church of Saint-Rémi was pulled down in 1855, and the present building was consecrated in 1865, generously supported by the Hériot family of entrepreneurs. Auguste Hériot, born in Essoyes, was one of the founders of the Paris department store Grands Magasins du Louvre.

“On 12 March 1763 a fire destroyed most of the half-timbered houses, and only a few stone buildings survived.

Renoir in Essoyes

The painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir first came to Essoyes in 1885, the birthplace of his future wife Aline Charigot. In December 1895 he bought a house there and from then on spent several months of every year in the village. The countryside around it served him as subject matter. He had his studio built in 1905 at the end of the garden. Today the house is a museum, which opened in 2017. Renoir, who died in 1919, lies in the cemetery together with his wife, his sons Jean and Pierre, and the ceramicist Claude Renoir.

Dizy

What to see

• The Maison de Renoir museum, with garden and studio, in the Rue de l'Extra
• The Maison de la Vigne wine museum, in the former château of the Hériot family
• The church of Saint-Rémi, with its stained glass and its listed organ, both gifts of the Hériot family
• The cemetery, with the graves of the Renoir and Hériot families
• The Chapelle Saint-Bernard in Servigny, built in the 12th century and now a listed monument

The chapel in Servigny, about two kilometres from the village centre, is said to have served Bernard of Clairvaux as a resting place on the way between the abbeys of Molesme and Clairvaux. Since 1894 the site has belonged to the city of Troyes, which captured springs there for its water supply. A visit to Essoyes therefore brings art, wine and landscape together in a small space.