Avenue de Champagne Map: Épernay's Champagne Houses

The Avenue de Champagne in Épernay lines up five of the great names within about a kilometre: Moët & Chandon (founded 1743, home of Dom Pérignon), Perrier-Jouët (1811), Pol Roger (1849, just off the avenue on Rue Winston Churchill), de Castellane (1895, with its climbable 66-metre tower) and Mercier (1858, famous for its giant cask and underground cellar train). They sit roughly west to east — see them all plotted on the map above, or read which one to pick in our grandes marques decision guide.

Yes — that is the whole appeal. The Avenue de Champagne is only about a kilometre long and flat, so you can stroll past Moët & Chandon, Perrier-Jouët, de Castellane and Mercier in well under twenty minutes, stopping for tours and tastings along the way. The cellars themselves run roughly 110 km underground, but at street level it is an easy walk. A guided Épernay day trip handles the timings and bookings between houses for you.

It is the grand street in Épernay where the major Champagne houses built their headquarters and dug their cellars into the chalk beneath. Around 110 km of galleries — holding many millions of ageing bottles — sit under barely a kilometre of road, which is why the avenue is part of the UNESCO-inscribed Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars (2015). It is the single best place to understand how Champagne is made and stored; start with the five maisons below.

There is no single best — it depends on what you want. Moët & Chandon is the icon and the safe first visit; Mercier is the most fun for families thanks to its little underground train; de Castellane adds a tower view; and the smaller growers around Épernay and Aÿ give the most personal tastings. We break down the trade-offs in the which-maison guide, or you can compare bookable visits on the map.

Almost always, yes. The grandes Maisons run scheduled guided tours with limited places, and they sell out 1–2 weeks ahead from April through October, with weekend slots going first. You cannot reliably just turn up. Reserve a cellar tour or a guided day trip ahead of time — check live dates and book with free cancellation on most tours so your plans stay flexible.

Yes — at Mercier on the Avenue de Champagne. Its cellar visit is famous for a little electric train that carries you through the underground galleries, alongside the giant 'Grand Foudre' cask built for the 1889 Paris World's Fair. It is the most family-friendly of the avenue's tours. Look for Mercier's gold marker on the map, then browse the cellar tours that visit the big houses.

Both are excellent and only about 30 minutes apart. Épernay packs the houses into one walkable avenue and feels intimate; Reims is a bigger city with its Gothic cathedral plus heavyweight cellars like Veuve Clicquot, Pommery and Mumm. Many visitors do both in a day. We compare them in detail in Épernay vs Reims, and the Reims area on the map shows the tours that combine the two.

Not because of the houses on the surface, but because of what sits beneath them. The chalk cellars under the avenue hold tens of millions of bottles of maturing Champagne, an inventory worth several billion euros — so per metre of street, the value stored underground is extraordinary. That hidden city of bottles is exactly what a cellar tour takes you down to see.