Ruinart Champagne Tour: An Honest Review of What You Get

Cost: 90 euros per adult for the standard cellar visit and tasting, as of 2026. Children 7 to 17 are 50 euros. Under 7 is free.

Length: Two hours, capped at 12 people.

What you drink: Two cuvées on the standard tour. Three on the Chardonnay Signature version, which costs 110 euros.

Book ahead: We reserved over a month out and there were not many slots left.

Book it if: you want the most polished cellar visit in Reims, you care about contemporary art, or Blanc de Blancs is your house style.

Book something else if: you are counting euros per glass, or the art program is not your thing. More on that below.

Beyond the standard 90 euro cellar visit, Ruinart sells experiences that run up to 700 euros. Two things are worth knowing before you book one.

The Ruinart Lunch, 150 euros on Fridays and Saturdays, does not include the cellars. It is four courses and two glasses, and that is all. People book it assuming the tour comes with it, and it does not.

If you want the cellars and a proper meal, that is the Gastronomic Interlude: 340 euros, four hours, cellars and gardens and five courses.

Whether it is worth 250 euros more than the standard tour is your call.

We chose to enjoy a delicious lunch at an exceptional value at Brasserie Le Jardin and then walked over to Ruinart for the cellar tour. More on that lunch below. 

Ruinart closed 4 Rue des Crayères for a three year renovation and reopened in October 2024. The changes are not cosmetic.

There is a new pavilion by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, a sculpture garden, a champagne bar, a boutique and a restaurant.

We went in August 2022, so the arrival, the reception room, the shop and the courtyard we encountered are the old versions.

The photographs are stunning. A curved building in pale stone and glass against the old nineteenth century walls, and inside, a carousel of Blanc de Blancs bottles turning slowly behind glass.

It makes me want to go back.

Visitors since the reopening keep mentioning the contrast, a modern building sitting directly on quarries cut in the third century.

What has not changed is underground. Nobody redesigns a chalk quarry.

The stairs, the chalk cellars, the stacked bottles and the scale are the same, and that is the part of this review I still stand behind completely.

The crayères are the reason to come, and I say that as someone who showed up for the Champagne.

They are former chalk quarries, cut from the third century onward, about 38 metres down, and Ruinart’s section runs roughly 8 kilometres, or just under 5 miles, under the Saint-Nicaise hill. The house’s twenty or so crayères sit on three levels.

We walked down a lot of stairs to get there. Not a few. A lot. I suspect that is precisely why the tasting comes at the end.

Partway down, turn around.

There is a version of the Ruinart Champagne image on the steps behind you, a woman in flowing robes holding up a coupe.

The original is an 1896 colour lithograph by Alphonse Mucha, one of his earliest advertising commissions, and it was shown at a poster exhibition here in Reims. Ruinart treats it as the start of its long relationship with artists.

It is the kind of detail that is easy to walk straight past, and I nearly did.

Once we were down the steps, the first thing we encountered is the bottling line.

We noticed the bottle is squatter and rounder than a standard champagne bottle, and Ruinart says it echoes the bottles used for sparkling wine in the house’s early days.

If you want to see one of those, there is a 1735 painting by Jean-François de Troy called Le Déjeuner d’Huîtres (The Oyster Luncheon), often described as the first painting to show champagne.

The bottle on that table is roughly the shape you are looking at.

Then we walked into the crayères proper, and it is cold, colder than people expect. The cellars sit at a constant 10 to 12 degrees Celsius, which is 50 to 54 Fahrenheit, with humidity close to 100 percent. I was very glad I had a light wrap with me.

These underground cathedrals are quite grand. Some of the chambers rise more than 30 metres, and standing under one gives you an appreciation of the massive scale of these cellars.

Two other things we noticed.

The first is that the scale and the silence arrive together. It is an enormous space and a completely quiet one, and the combination is stranger than either would be alone.

The second is the white. These are chalk quarries, and the walls are startlingly white.

Our friendly guide talked as we walked and explained how the bottles are stored, why a vintage champagne is a different proposition from a non-vintage one, and a dozen other things I would not have known to ask about.

Then there is riddling, the slow work of turning the bottle so the sediment collects where it can be removed. Most of it is done by machine now.

Ruinart says its most prestigious cuvées are still riddled by hand, each bottle given a sharp quarter, sixth or eighth turn once a day.

The tour ends underground with a contemporary light show set to music, projected onto the chalk. Then the route loops.

We came back up to the room where we started, and this time the glasses got filled for the really fun part, the tasting.

One practical note that is hard to find anywhere else. There is an elevator if you are unable to manage the steps down into the cellar.

Our tasting was relaxed. Nobody rushed us, nobody hovered, and the pours were generous.

When we went, the structure let us choose between the Blanc de Blancs pairing and the Rosé pairing, non-vintage alongside the vintage Dom Ruinart, which meant that as a couple we could order differently and taste across all four.

Which is of course exactly what we did. The vintage Blanc de Blancs was my favorite of the four.

After the tour, we had the option to browse the art in the gallery, which we happily took.

Then we visited the Ruinart wine shop and picked up a bottle of the Ruinart Millésimé 2011 from the boutique, a blend we had not tasted, purely because we wanted something special from the cellars to bring home.

This specific release features a limited-edition label created by designer Guillaume Sardin. It is still waiting for the right night to pop it open.

So, is it worth it? Here is how I came at that question, and I will admit the answer surprised me.

Ruinart’s cellars are part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing, and that is true. But it is not a Ruinart exclusive.

Saint-Nicaise Hill is one of three areas in the 2015 inscription, and six houses sit on it with crayères inside the listing: Ruinart, Veuve Clicquot, Pommery, Charles Heidsieck, Taittinger and Martel. Ruinart got there first, in 1768. The other five followed.

So you can walk into a UNESCO listed chalk cellar in Reims for a lot less than 90 euros.

Which left me asking what the extra money actually buys.

Three things, honestly.

A smaller group, capped at 12. A tasting that includes vintage wine rather than entry level. And an art collection that is not decoration, it is the actual point of the house’s identity, with more than a hundred works across the site.

If those three things matter to you, the price makes sense. If they do not, you are paying a large premium for chalk that looks much like the chalk next door. For us, it was worth it, and I would spend it again.

For a sense of the gap, Taittinger sits on the same hill, reopened in 2024 after months of renovation, and its entry level cellar tour and tasting runs 40 euros for adults.

Pommery sits lower still, around 30 euros.

We have not done those two, so I am giving you the prices and not a review. I rounded up the rest in my 9 best Champagne houses to visit, all with tours in English.

Skip it if you are indifferent to contemporary art. A meaningful share of what you are paying for is the collection and the way the visit is staged around it.

That is not a criticism of Ruinart, it is just a bad match for some people.

And skip it if you would rather meet a grower. Ruinart runs like the LVMH house it is: extremely well organized and well polished.

We spent another day of that same Champagne trip with two family producers near Epernay, one of which has been in the same family since 1888 and still presses its grapes in an old wooden press.

Standing next to that old press felt about as far from a luxury pavilion as you can get, in the best possible way.

If that sounds more like your afternoon than a chalk cathedral does, read my review of our private family Champagne producer tour.

Both are fantastic days. They are just different days.

We loved booking through Rue des Vignerons and now use it for every wine visit we do in France.

Ruinart is on there. Confirmation is instant, there are no extra fees on top of the ticket price, and it shows you which slots run in English, which matters to us because we do not speak French.

Tours run in French and English and are capped at 12 people, so they go. We booked a little over a month ahead and the calendar was already thin. Learn from us and book earlier than feels necessary.

Coming in for the day? Here is how we did Paris to Reims, and where we stayed in Champagne plus other options.

If you cannot get a slot, do not write Ruinart off, because this is the part almost nobody tells you.

The grounds are free to enter. Ruinart’s own site says the gardens are open to the public free of charge, and the address is open seven days a week.

It is a 7,000 square metre park, 5,000 of that listed woodland, with contemporary artworks through it, and the pavilion and bar are there too.

So you can walk in, look at the art, and buy a glass at the bar without a booking at all.

That is a very good plan B if you are in Reims at short notice and every cellar slot is gone.

We had lunch on the terrace at Brasserie Le Jardin before our afternoon tour, and it was the best value meal of our whole time in Reims.

Three courses for 33 euros then, 42 now. My salmon in Bellevue was outstanding.

It sits in the grounds of Domaine Les Crayères, a short walk from Ruinart, and it holds the only Bib Gourmand in Reims in the 2026 Michelin Guide.

Book ahead. The terrace fills up, and it is worth the seat.

If you have longer in the city, I put together 7 things to do in Reims from that same trip.

Can you bring children?

Yes. Ruinart prices children aged 7 to 17 at 50 euros and under 7 is free, which is unusual among the big houses. Whether a seven year old wants two hours in a cold cellar is a separate question.

Is the tour in English?

Yes. Ruinart runs the cellar visit in both French and English. Pick your language when you book, because not every slot is offered in both.

Can you just turn up?

Not for the tour. The cellar visits are booked slots capped at 12 people and they sell out well ahead. The gardens are a different story, see the booking section above.

Ruinart was one of the best organized wine visits we have done anywhere, and I would still book it again. But I would book it knowing what I was buying.

You are not paying 90 euros for access to a UNESCO cellar. Other houses on the same hill will sell you that for a lot less.

You are paying for a group of twelve instead of thirty for an intimate visit, for vintage wine in the glass instead of entry level, and for a house that has treated art as part of its identity since 1896 rather than as lobby decoration.

If that sounds like your kind of afternoon, it is worth it!

If you would rather do two houses for the same money, or sit in a grower’s kitchen while he explains his press, spend it there instead and do not feel you have missed out.

We did both on that trip, and I am glad we did. A big house and a small grower a few days apart teach you different things, and the contrast made me appreciate Champagne more than either would have on its own.

If you are trying to decide between the two, don’t miss my post: Reims Champagne Tours: Big House or Smaller Grower?

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Questions about our Ruinart Champagne tour experience? 

Let me know in the comments below!