Unchair

Unchair is a village of 194 inhabitants (as of 2023) in the Marne département. It is not one of the classified champagne villages: the commune is rated neither Grand Cru nor Premier Cru. Even so, anyone who wants to get to know Champagne away from the big names will find a quiet stretch of countryside here, west of Reims.

Location

Unchair lies in the north-west of the département, in the farming landscape of the Tardenois. The village sits in a cleft that the stream Clos, a tributary of the Vesle, has cut into a plateau. To the south and west the plateau rises to more than 170 metres. Across the commune's 373 hectares, the altitude ranges from 85 to 194 metres.

The neighbouring communes are Breuil-sur-Vesle, Hourges, Crugny, Courville and Magneux. It is 8 kilometres by road to Fismes and 71 kilometres to Châlons-en-Champagne, the prefecture of the département. Administratively, Unchair belongs to the arrondissement of Reims, the canton of Fismes-Montagne de Reims and the intercommunal authority of Fismes Ardre et Vesle. It lies within the catchment area of Reims.

“Unchair is a village of 194 inhabitants (as of 2023) in the Marne département.

Landscape and land use

The commune is rural, with scattered buildings. Around 96 per cent of the land is farmed. The 2018 figures give:

• arable land: 65.3 per cent
• mixed agricultural land: 17.5 per cent
• permanent crops: 13.4 per cent
• woodland: 3.8 per cent

In this region permanent crops can include vineyards, but the statistics do not break this down. Either way, Unchair is not a champagne village in the classic sense: arable farming shapes the picture.

The climate is oceanic, with an average annual temperature of around 10.4 °C and roughly 700 millimetres of rainfall a year (1971 to 2000). These are familiar conditions for Champagne's vineyards: fresh summers, cool winters, rain spread through the year.

Ruinart Champagner

Name and history

The village name appears many times in old records. At the start of the 11th century it is Unum Carrum, in 1125 Uncar, and later, among others, Huncheri, Uncher and Unchaire. The present spelling, then, only took shape over the course of centuries.

What to see

The most important building is the church of Saint-Rémi, listed as a monument historique since 1954. The name recalls Saint Remigius, the bishop of Reims, who has long been held in great reverence in the region.

For lovers of champagne, Unchair is best seen as a stop on a drive through the Vesle valley between Fismes and Reims. The church and the setting in the cleft of the valley are worth a short halt. For tasting champagne, you are better off in the well-known villages of the Montagne de Reims and along the Marne, both easy to reach from here.