Champagne

Champagne lies barely ninety minutes from Paris, yet its rolling chalk hills feel like a different world entirely, given over almost completely to the vines that produce the wine bearing its name. Reims and Épernay make good bases, both sitting above vast networks of cellars cut into the chalk where millions of bottles age in the cool dark. A tasting here, in the cellar rather than at a shop counter, is the difference between a nice afternoon and one you remember.