Consider taking a Photography Tour to Champagne in September or October.  It is the best time to visit.  In September the grapes are ripe and ready for picking.  You may be lucky enough to be there during the ‘vendanges’ when the grapes are picked by hand and the countryside is dotted with people in colourful clothes picking the grapes.

A Photography Tour in Champagne offers the possibility to take the best pictures in the most spectacular settings.  You will taste champagne from small and big producers, photograph their cellars, and make beautiful landscape photographs. 

If you come during the grape picking, last year in early September and probably similarly this year, I will arrange for you to spend part of the day with the pickers, getting up close, offering some superb vivid portraits of the people, the vines and the grapes.  Visiting the cellars at this time is sometimes difficult as everyone is busy with the harvest but the photographic opportunities are wonderful.  I also arrange for us to have a delicious local champagne lunch with the harvesters.  You will also be able to photograph the crushing and processing of the grapes.  

Not to worry, if you miss this event.  The countryside with its criss-cross patterns of the vineyards, cyclists and old stone villages make for stunning photographs.  In October, the leaves turn from green to a kaleidoscope of oranges, yellows, rust and gold, and although the grapes have been harvested there are always some remaining, as the quotas in champagne are very strict.  

In Fleury La Rivière there is a small champagne house that we can visit which has exceptional cellar full of fossils abounding with shells that are several tens of million of years old.  I took some pretty interesting and different photographs there and of course we will enjoy a glass of their champagne before leaving.

There are a number of small picturesque villages, some along the banks of the Marne with its boats and pretty bridges.  As all the Champagne area is hilly there are many vantage points allowing a variety of landscapes that are quite different one from the other.

The difference between a private Champagne Tour and a private Photography Champagne Tour is that you will see a greater diversity whilst receiving full photography tuition and will come home with a great set of pictures.  I can organise anything from a day trip to a 5 day trip that will take you to all three champagne areas.

I will definitely be spending a part of September and Octoberin the vineyards taking photographs, so join me!