Francois Seconde Brut NV — Champagne, 3 L

Reims is a place, not an appellation

Reims is a city in the Marne department, about 129 km northeast of Paris, and one of the two commercial centres of Champagne. It is not a separate appellation. Wines of the Reims area are made and sold under the AOC Champagne, so the label that matters for this bottle is Champagne, with Grand Cru as its classification.

The city itself is old: Reims was founded by Gauls around 80 BC and was called Durocortorum under Roman rule, and Reims Cathedral, begun in the 13th century in the Gothic style, was the traditional coronation site of French kings. Beneath it lie the crayères, former underground chalk quarries whose stone was used to build the city from the 10th century onward. Champagne houses such as Ruinart, Veuve Clicquot and Taittinger moved to the Saint-Nicaise hill, and cellars cut into the Reims chalk keep a temperature of 10 to 12 °C. The Saint-Nicaise hill was inscribed in 2015 as part of the UNESCO site Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars.