Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars

The Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars cover the places where sparkling wine made by secondary fermentation in the bottle developed from the early 17th century to its early industrialisation in the 19th. UNESCO groups them in three ensembles: the historic vineyards of Hautvillers, Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Saint-Nicaise Hill in Reims, and the Avenue de Champagne with Fort Chabrol in Épernay.

Hautvillers had a Benedictine abbey founded in the 7th century, and in 1668 the monk Pierre Pérignon, Dom Pérignon, was transferred there and served as cellarer until his death in 1715. Under him the abbey doubled its vineyards, and he introduced extensive blending of grapes from many plots. The popular claim that he invented sparkling champagne is wrong, and the sparkling style did not dominate until the mid-19th century.

Cellars dug into the chalk hillsides in the 17th and 18th centuries run beneath the villages, while at Saint-Nicaise Hill in Reims existing chalk quarries were extended into cellars several kilometres long. Champagne merchants settled along the Avenue de Champagne in Épernay, on a trade route between France and Germany, from the 18th century, and Fort Chabrol housed research into the phylloxera blight. The property was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2015.