Mercier Champagne Cellar

Leaving Épernay, on the Rue de Champagne, you come to Mercier's modern visitor center where the world's largest wine cask sits center stage. Holding the equivalent of 200,000 bottles of champagne, it was made to advertise Mercier at the World Trade Fair in Paris in 1889 and proved as great an attraction as the Eiffel Tower. Houses that interrupted the casks progress to Paris had to be razed. Mercier's tour gives you an upbeat movie history of Mercier champagne, then whisks you down to the galeries in a glass-sided elevator past a diorame of the founders balloning over their estate. An electric train weaves you through the vast cellars past some interesting carvings and boundless bottles of bubbly. (closed Tues. and Wed., Nov. to Mar.)