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Taittinger wants to receive less, but better

The new public reception area at Taittinger, in on November 25, 2024. In the foreground is a sculpture by Bernar Venet. NICOLAS KRIEF FOR “THE WORLD”

Taittinger is often where you least expect him. This is a renowned champagne house, which, after eighteen months of work and development, reopened to the public, in July, its historic site on Saint-Nicaise hill, on the heights of Reims. And what does the president of this family house, Vitalie Taittinger, tell us? “We are going to welcome fewer people. » To our astonishment, she responds with a greedy smile.

Taittinger received 90,000 people per year before the work. Today, the goal is to accommodate at most 60,000. Strange for a house which was a pioneer in wine tourism, at the beginning of the 1980s, by creating a service for visiting its chalk pits, 18 meters underground, connected by 4 kilometers of galleries dug by monks from the 4th centurye century, where millions of bottles rest today in 10 or 12 degrees.

Strange when we know that Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, after buying the family home in 2006 from an American fund, and finding himself heavily in debt, gave a boost to visiting the chalk pits, renovated the tasting room and installed a counter bottle sales.

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