The unassuming French city with affordable champagne and a quirky museum ...Middle East

I’m buying champagne in Champagne. Jean-Michel, the owner of the Aux Crieurs de Vin shop and bistro in Troyes, is helping me select a bottle.

He stands before me in a navy blue apron, holds a steady hand up to his nose, and chops the air. “Like this,” he says, trying to encapsulate the nature of the bottle in a single gesture.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the world of wine and especially in the rarefied rolling country of the Champagne AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée), which is celebrating its 10th year since Unesco recognition.

To the north sit the big guns, the cities of Reims and Épernay, where Bollinger, Krug, and Moët & Chandon preside over their capacious cellars.

After a Eurostar from the UK, travel south by train from Paris (90 minutes from Gare de l’Est) and you arrive in “Champagne’s southern capital” of Troyes – a city slightly larger than Salisbury.

Despite the self-styled title, if you had travelled here ignorant of its geographical prestige, you may never catch on. Instead of neat parcels of vines patterning the countryside, there’s only a single vine-striped hill, Montgueux. France’s largest outlet malls on Troyes’s outskirts pull attention, while the city’s most famous museum has a focus, not on vinification, but spanners.

The museum, Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière (or Mopo, to the greatly relieved non-French speaker) is tucked away in a serene courtyard in Troyes’s half-timbered 16th century core. It’s a picturesque city centre of colourful, gabled houses – some imposing, some slouching like a Bake Off showstopper in a too warm tent.

Built on the success of the city’s medieval textile industry, the historic centre, rotten and uncared for, was almost flattened in the early 20th century. Happily, the restoration argument won out and visitors can explore a maze of atmospheric alleys (such as Ruelle des Chats, where opposing houses nearly touch) and quiet, unexpected courtyards – such as Mopo’s – with the houses clad in overlapping diamonds of rot-resistant chestnut wood.

There’s a smell of freshly cut timber when I walk in, as carpenters, employing archaic-looking tools, strip bark off logs while a small crowd looks on. Within, the museum’s catalogue of 12,000 tools is arranged into artistic displays.

Even more statistically compelling than Mopo’s tool count is how the Aube department, which includes Troyes, accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s stained-glass. The city’s stained-glass museum, housed in a grand 18th century former hospital, brings the artwork down to eye-level.

If you haven’t picked up a Troyes City Pass for reduced admission prices (starting from £15 for 24 hours), you’ll find a good portion of the Aube’s stained-glass suspended in Troyes’s single -towered cathedral (alas, over 400 years of construction, the funds dried up before they could construct the matching tower).

As you’re consulting your map of Troyes’s town centre, its shape – that of a champagne cork – is working subliminally on your mind. Despite all the stained glass, tools and textiles, you’re in wine country.

In Montgueux, the city’s closest appellation (wine-growing area) reached after a 20-minute drive, I’m greeted by a towering Brutalist sculpture of a champagne flute. Navigating between the weathered yellow-stone houses of the eponymous village, where vines have been cultivated for over 800 years, faded magnum-shaped signs advertising champagne growers and producers hail passersby.

square FRANCE TRAVEL

The pine-scented corner of France where locals go to escape holiday crowds

Hélène Beaugrand is a winemaker whose family is so authentically Montgueux that her street address is also her grandfather’s name. Her patter as sparkling as her product, Beaugrand explains her wine-making process while pouring fizzing glassfuls for me to taste. It’s £21pp for an hour-and-a-half tasting of five cuvées (book in advance); for comparison, a tasting at Moët & Chandon in the north starts at around £38pp.

The sense of history weighs heavily here. Nowadays, Beaugrand is helped with her wine-making by her son, Cedric. “He’s 27,” she says, loading up her estate car with bottles for a wine show. “He will continue the story.”

Back in the historic centre, I continue my own narrative, tasting champagnes via a flight at Chez Philippe (£13 for three small glasses), which is located on the historic nexus of Rue Champeaux. It’s the weekend, the streets are filled with people and a motorcycle festival has blazed incongruously into this half-timbered town.

My afternoon of bar-hopping is accompanied by revving from the daredevil death balls set up behind the indoor market.

I’m pleased to find the average glass of champagne hovers around £7 (in Reims, places like Winebar Reims offer glasses from £12).

Waking the next morning, ready for my cycle to the nearby Orient Lakes (£13 e-bike hire for one day; Maison du Velo), I have a eureka moment concerning Jean-Michel’s esoteric gesture. Drink only champagne and you won’t have a headache in the morning.

Getting there

The writer was a guest of Troyes Champagne Tourism and Eurostar. Eurostar tickets from London St Pancras International to Paris Gare Du Nord start from £39 one-way, eurostar.com

Staying there

Doubles at Okko Hotels Troyes Centre, close to the railway station, start from £72 (€85) per night, without breakfast. There’s also a £1pp, per night tourist tax, okkohotels.com

More information

troyeschampagnetourisme

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The unassuming French city with affordable champagne and a quirky museum )

Also on site :

• Numbrix 9 - June 25
• Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Iran. Could Gaza be next?
• Taylor Swift Stuns Fans With Unexpected Kane Brown Duet in Nashville: 'Unforgettable'