Domaine Les Crayères

The Hotel

Domaine Les Crayères occupies the former private residence of Marie-Thérèse Lannes de Montebello, Marquise de Polignac — the granddaughter of Jeanne Alexandrine Pommery (Madame Pommery), who had founded the Pommery Champagne house in 1858 — built between 1898 and 1904 by the Reims architect Louis Sorel. The site is a 7-hectare landscaped park on the southern edge of central Reims, directly above the limestone-cellar network that holds the working Pommery cellars (220 staircases descending 30 metres into the chalk subsoil — UNESCO World Heritage as of 2015 — directly underneath the property's gardens). The mansion stood as the Polignac private residence through the 20th century before being acquired in 1980 by Gérard and Elyane Boyer (the chef and his wife who had operated a 2-Michelin-star kitchen in nearby Sept-Saulx since 1972) and restored across two years to a 20-room Relais & Châteaux that opened on 1 March 1983.

The 20 rooms — including 4 named suites — are arranged across the building's three floors with the original 1898-1904 Sorel architectural plan preserved. Standard categories at 28 sqm; the named Suites (Pommery, Polignac, Champagne, Marquise) at 60-90 sqm are the milestone units, with restored period parquet, original stuccoed ceilings, and individually curated 19th-century antique furnishing. The Marquise Suite at 90 sqm is the headline category — the original noble bedroom of the Marquise de Polignac, restored to the original 1904 decorative scheme. Bathrooms are travertine and brass; bath products are local Champagne-region botanicals.

Le Parc is the named principal restaurant — opened with the 1983 reopening — and has held two Michelin stars continuously since 1990 under successive chef directorships (Gérard Boyer until 2003, Didier Elena 2003-2009, and Philippe Mille from 2010 to the present). Mille's contemporary French register is paired against the most extensive Champagne wine cellar of any region hotel — 13,000 bottles with grandes-marques verticals back to the 1928 vintage and complete bottlings of Salon, Krug, Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, Comtes de Champagne and Dom Pérignon. Le Jardin handles the all-day garden-terrace register; the Bar Michel Lemoult runs the cocktail-and-aperitivo programme. There is no spa or pool — the heritage building's footprint precludes both. The fitness centre is on the lower-ground level. The principal in-house cultural programme is the chauffeured tour to Pommery, Veuve Clicquot, Krug and Ruinart (all five minutes by car); the Pommery cellars themselves are the only Champagne-region UNESCO site directly accessible from a hotel garden.

The Reims position is the booking trade-off relative to Royal Champagne's clifftop Champillon address. From the front door it is six minutes by car to Place Royale and Reims Cathedral, four minutes to the Pommery cellars (the property is in the same UNESCO Champagne Hillsides complex), six minutes to Veuve Clicquot, eight minutes to Reims-Champagne TGV station, and 70 minutes by car to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. For travellers wanting the heritage-grand-mansion booking with the 2-Michelin-star kitchen and the central-Reims grandes-maisons access, Domaine Les Crayères is unambiguous. Royal Champagne is the wine-country resort alternative; Crayères is the Reims-mansion answer.

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