Domaine Les Crayères in Reims is adding a 750-square-metre spa and seven new suites by 2026, while holding three Michelin Keys and two Michelin stars.
The château sits on top of Saint-Nicaise Hill in Reims, and you can see why it’s become one of the world’s most distinguished luxury destinations.
Built in 1904 for the Marquise de Polignac (her mother was Madame Pommery, of champagne fame), it’s a Relais & Châteaux flagship that regularly gets voted among the most beautiful hotels on the planet.
A Living Monument to Champagne Heritage
The location matters here. The château perches on a UNESCO World Heritage Site, built above centuries-old crayères (the chalk pits that now hold champagne for the region’s biggest houses). Madame Pommery wanted something extraordinary for her daughter, so she commissioned it in pure Mansart style.
For over a century now, guests have looked out over Reims from these windows. The Saint-Remi Basilica, the Cathedral, the rolling Montagne de Reims. You’re minutes from Taittinger, Pommery, Ruinart, and Veuve Clicquot. All reachable through sustainable transport options, which is a nice touch.
Gardens of Exceptional Beauty
The seven-hectare estate has gardens designed by Édouard André and Jules-Édouard Redont, two landscape architects who knew what they were doing. Lebanese cedars, flowering plants everywhere, the kind of place that looks good in any season. In 2023, they started an ambitious restoration to bring the gardens back to what they were originally, reviving that romantic character.
But they’re not just restoring. Between now and 2026, the place is getting a major upgrade. There’s going to be a lake with a 750-square-metre spa designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon. Swimming pools up to twenty metres long, saunas, hammams, treatment rooms, and a wellness bar. Big windows looking out over the garden and lake. It’ll be quite something.
The Pierre-Yves Rochon Vision
Pierre-Yves Rochon, one of France’s top interior designers, handled the interiors. Classic French style meets contemporary sensibility. He used Pierre Frey fabrics with historical patterns, Dedar velvet, and embroidered pieces by Lelièvre. The kind of materials that make a difference.
The winter garden has this artfully draped roof. Oak furnishings in the Salon Melchior bring back that old-world elegance. Bar La Rotonde? They went full British gentlemen’s club with rich mahogany and tartans.
Le Parc restaurant’s dining room is grandiose, with a chandelier that commands attention and family portraits on the walls. The nearby Salle Boisée has an Aubusson tapestry and floor-to-ceiling bow windows that frame the grounds perfectly.
Twenty Havens of Aristocratic Comfort
Twenty rooms and suites, each named after a European empress, queen, or princess. French art de vivre, basically. The attention to detail is real: period 1, carefully selected art, noble materials. From the upper floors, you get majestic views that make you feel like you’re visiting an aristocratic family home.
The service here is exceptional. The Michelin Guide gave them three Michelin Keys, their highest distinction for hotels. That’s not easy to get.
By 2026, they’re adding two new buildings: L’Orangerie and La Folie. Seven suites, each at least eighty square metres. There’s also a three-hundred-square-metre villa you can privatise entirely. And they’re adding a new winter garden to the château to match the existing conservatory on the right wing, restoring the building’s original symmetry.
Chef Christophe Moret: A Contemporary Voice in French Gastronomy
Christophe Moret runs the kitchen, and he’s not your typical French chef. Calm, confident, part of a new generation that uses heritage as a starting point rather than a rulebook.
“Culinary skills should be used to convey emotion, not celebrated solely for their technical prowess,” he says.
This guy’s an expert with sauces and meat, but he’s put vegetables at the centre of his cooking. He embraces global influences while championing authentic French gastronomy. He calls it “living cuisine,” letting ingredients reveal themselves while drawing on international traditions.
“History has shown us that our cuisine has always been influenced by other cultures. Why try to set it in stone, focusing solely on technique rather than trying to create emotion?” Good question.
Quality starts with the products. Moret works with carefully selected suppliers, following micro-seasons and peak maturity. Local ingredients whenever possible. Those mushrooms from neighbouring quarries in his signature foie gras feuille-à-feuille? Local.
He does tableside carving, serves lobster in sealed casseroles, and offers two vegetarian dishes. He sees a successful restaurant as teamwork. The kitchen talks to the sommeliers, who talk to the dining room staff. Waiters know each dish inside and out and meet the producers personally.
The sommeliers taste every dish beforehand to nail the pairings from the cellar’s one thousand different champagnes. Les Crayères has this magnificent Louis XIV dining room that celebrates French art de vivre, but they’ve given Moret the creative freedom to forge something contemporary.
Rosalie Boucher: A Rising Star in Pastry
Rosalie Boucher handles the pastry program. Her creations are delicate and bold at the same time, light on sugar but heavy on raw, authentic flavour. She spent four years as Pastry Sous-Chef with Cédric Grolet at Le Meurice in Paris before taking over desserts at both Le Parc (two-star) and Brasserie Le Jardin.
Her secret? Seasonality. She’s dedicated to sustainability and uses only local products. No vanilla (though she’s heard about a variety from Brittany she wants to try). No exotic fruits. Instead, she works with regionally grown peaches, pears, and figs.
The 1 terroir inspires her. She incorporates the region’s wine into desserts: iced verjus parfait, grape and rosé champagne sorbet, chocolate with agastache and champagne marc.
“Two of my creations were inspired by a local gluten-free grain farmer: one uses a light, crispy rye; the other is based on buckwheat and apples,” she explains.
Simple plating on everything. “It’s my way of showcasing the terroir,” she says.
Her dream? Creating the best apple tart the world has ever known. In 2024, Gault&Millau named her Best Pastry Chef of the Grand Est Region. She’s going to leave her mark here.
An Exceptional Wine Cellar
The wine program here is one of the most impressive in France, maybe the world. Three cellars with seventy-two thousand bottles across more than three thousand three hundred different wines. One thousand champagnes. They keep it all in an authentic bunker at the far end of the grounds, perfect for preserving rare wines like Domaine Jamet Côte Rotie and Meursault Coche-Dury.
More than fifteen thousand bottles of champagne with extraordinary ageing potential. In the maturation cellar, rows and rows wait patiently while the sommeliers care for them. Time does its work with precision, building complexity into each bottle.
The cellar works with independent wine-growers, stocking over five hundred different wines shaped by terroir and expertise. Each year, they select only a small fraction of hundreds of new vintages through extremely discerning curation.
Because of this approach, Domaine Les Crayères won the 2024 World’s Best Champagne and Sparkling Wine List award from The World of Fine Wine for the fourth consecutive year. Make that five consecutive years in 2025. They also received the Excellence Award from Wine Spectator in 2024 for the third consecutive year.
Brasserie Le Jardin: Casual Excellence
Beyond Le Parc’s formal elegance, there’s Brasserie Le Jardin, a contemporary loft-style building tucked into the grounds. It sits in Reims’ most beautiful garden, with a bucolic terrace where you can eat seasonal dishes prepared by Chef Moret using local produce. Sharing plates, emphasis on conviviality.
Michelin Bib Gourmand and two Gault&Millau toques. It seats one hundred fifty in a casual, warm setting where generous, spontaneous cuisine meets refined technique. Conviviality, generosity, and savoir-faire all come together here.
Bar La Rotonde: A Legendary Private Sanctuary
Bar La Rotonde has become legendary. Gentlemen’s club meets French winter garden. It’s one of those go-to addresses on global luxury itineraries. Come autumn, you can warm yourself amid Ralph Lauren virgin wool and soft velvet. In spring, the terrace overlooking the gardens gives you front-row seats to spectacular sunsets.
The spirits selection is extraordinary. Exceptionally rare brandies, including those from the Tyrolean Rochelt distillery, brown spirits, and signature cocktails that showcase the bar team’s expertise.
Annual Events: Building Community and Legacy
Les Crayères hosts several signature annual events that integrate the property into local life while celebrating excellence and generosity.
The Soirée Blanche, in its twelfth edition in 2024, brings over three thousand participants dressed entirely in white. They sit on the lawn eating picnic baskets prepared by the chef and served with champagne, or they dine on the château’s terrace or the brasserie’s garden terrace. Three concerts, a DJ set mixing local and international performers, a champagne bar, and fireworks to end the night.
The annual Farmers Market attracts six thousand visitors to the gardens over a September weekend. Artisan producers get the public visibility they deserve. Julien and Patrick Cogniard raise the milk-fed lambs served in Le Parc. Sophie Laluc makes goat cheeses from the Argonne forest. The point is clear: Champagne and Ardennes produce far more than wine. Farmers, growers, and food producers of all types thrive here.
Each October, Les Crayères hosts a traditional gala fundraiser with five women wine-growers, supporting the fight against breast cancer. All proceeds go to Institut Godinot for medical research and support for women affected by the illness and their families. Excellence and commitment combined, with a bespoke menu designed to showcase standout wines, each dish paired with particular vintages.
The intimate Le Temps d’un Terroir series welcomes iconic wine-growers who reveal their estates’ history during exceptional dinners. Producers from Château Angelus, Domaine Jacques Selosse, and Domaine Raveneau have been honoured guests. The chef and head sommelier prepare pairings that exalt each vintage’s depth and authenticity, served to only twelve guests in a private dining room. Truly exclusive.
The Gardinier Legacy
You can’t tell the story of Domaine Les Crayères without the Gardinier family. Their entrepreneurial vision has shaped the property since 1983. Lucien Gardinier founded the family business nearly a century ago. Xavier Gardinier created Les Crayères as a haven of peace with a hotel and fine dining restaurant. The property joined Relais & Châteaux in 1984.
Today, the third generation runs things: three brothers, Thierry, Stéphane, and Laurent. They oversee operations across France, England, the United States, Lebanon, and Japan. “Our goal is to showcase, share, cultivate and transmit the living heritage of our Properties and usher them into the 21st century,” they say.
The Gardinier Group now has four French properties, including six restaurants, six wine and caviar shops across the globe, two e-commerce sites, and one hotel. Sales exceed fifty-five million euros. Four hundred eighty employees who share simple, authentic values: respect, perseverance, and sensibility. Every client is invited to ‘Experience the emotion’ through unique moments at the properties.
The portfolio extends beyond Les Crayères to Maisons Taillevent, Le Comptoir du Caviar, and Drouant restaurant. Each represents excellence in their domain. Les Caves de Taillevent operates shops in Paris, Tokyo, and Beirut. Les 110 de Taillevent in London’s Marylebone district brings the group’s vision to international audiences. Les Expériences de Taillevent, created in 2022, further extends its reach in curating gastronomic experiences.
Recognition and Accolades
The achievements here have garnered extraordinary recognition from the most prestigious authorities in hospitality and gastronomy. Three Michelin Keys for the hotel experience. Le Parc maintains two Michelin stars and receives a 17/20 rating with four toques from Gault&Millau for 2025. Brasserie Le Jardin holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and two Gault&Millau toques.
Triple recognition in the 2024 TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice awards for the château, Le Parc, and Brasserie Le Jardin. Condé Nast Traveller voted Les Crayères the most beautiful hotel in the world in 2002. The New York Times gave it the same honour in 2007. Living Heritage Company status acknowledges their commitment to preserving and transmitting French craftsmanship.
A Vision for Tomorrow
As Domaine Les Crayères approaches its 2026 transformation, the property shows how heritage and innovation can coexist. The spa, new suites, and restored architectural symmetry represent thoughtful evolution, not just expansion. They’re enhancing the guest experience while respecting the property’s historic character and UNESCO World Heritage Site location.
Chef Moret’s philosophy captures the domaine’s broader approach: using tradition as a springboard while embracing contemporary influences and emotional resonance. His desire to connect, surprise, and move guests might be the ultimate tribute to French gastronomy. He’s tracing a path for posterity, enabling culinary excellence to extend its influence across future generations and borders, attracting gourmets from around the world.
Rosalie Boucher’s sustainable approach and regional focus show how luxury can align with environmental consciousness without compromising excellence. Her recognition as Best Pastry Chef of the Grand Est Region signals personal achievement and validates Les Crayères’ commitment to supporting rising talent and progressive culinary philosophy.
The wine cellar, with its privileged relationships with independent wine-growers and discerning curation standards, exemplifies their dedication to authenticity and quality. The consecutive World’s Best Champagne and Sparkling Wine List awards reflect the expertise, passion, and careful stewardship of the sommelier team, not just impressive inventory.
Through its annual events (from the exuberant Soirée Blanche to the meaningful Pink October fundraiser), Les Crayères shows that luxury extends beyond personal indulgence. Community engagement, cultural celebration, and social responsibility. The Farmers Market embodies this philosophy particularly well, creating platforms for local artisans while educating visitors about regional terroir and traditional production methods.
Conclusion: The Art of Timeless Elegance
Domaine Les Crayères is more than an exceptional hotel or collection of restaurants. It embodies a comprehensive philosophy of French art de vivre, where history informs rather than constrains, where excellence requires continuous evolution, and where luxury means something deeper than surface opulence.
