M aison Ruinart celebrates its 300th birthday in five years’ time, but the planning has already begun, not least with the opening of a magnificent new garden last month. It’s part of a wider overhaul of Ruinart’s headquarters in Reims, 4 Rue des Crayères. The gardens, which were three years in the conceiving and a further three in the creation, “balance tradition and modernity”, says Fabien Vallérian, the champagne producer’s international director of arts and culture.
Entering from the street, you are guided by a pathway lined with etched chalk walls, which echo the five miles of chalk quarries, or crayères, that run 130ft below the Unesco-listed site. These were dreamt up by the landscape architect and artist Christophe Gautrand, who was given carte blanche by the chief executive and president of Ruinart, Frédéric Dufour, to bring to life the 75,000 sq ft of newly created gardens. From the pathway you emerge into a space where 19th-century buildings face the newly commissioned eco-pavilion, designed by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
This is a curved structure made of local limestone with an asymmetrical grass roof (to echo the curve of the Ruinart bottle and the roundness of champagne bubbles) and reflective glass façade..