This summer, Maison Taittinger is opening its doors! Completely redesigned for a better experience, you will discover the new face of its historic site on the hill of Saint-Nicaise in Reims. The true beating heart of the Maison’s activities, Saint-Nicaise is THE place to discover, visit and taste the Taittinger universe.
To support this reopening, we tell you here, in several episodes, its history and what connects it to the Taittinger family.
The reinvention of the Saint-Nicaise gardens, a verdant tribute to the Maison Taittinger
The historic home of the Maison Taittinger, in the Saint-Nicaise square in Reims, is undergoing a complete transformation. Vitalie Taittinger and the architect Giovanni Pace have worked to realise a complete renovation of the Art Deco building and to establish a dialogue, which did not previously exist, with the adjacent garden.
To achieve this dialogue between the building and the grounds, the Maison Taittinger called on Triptyque / CDCP, a landscape gardening agency created by three young women – Cécile Allouis, Roxane de Buttet Nowak and Clémence Duguit – on completion of their training at the Versailles landscape gardening school. For the Maison Taittinger, the design brief was simple. It was a matter of creating a garden that was faithful to its values, welcoming, and which could furthermore, in the words of the three Triptyque landscape gardeners, «establish a link between tradition and modernity, structure and poetry».
To do so, they dive into the archives and the plans, immersing themselves in the Saint-Nicaise building, developing a passion for the history of the crayères, these former quarries which have become cellars, excavated from the Roman period and today registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List (hills, buildings and champagne cellars). A guiding line takes shape. At its centre, the art deco building, its architecture, its reinvented peristyle. Underneath, the crayères, invisible from the ground, inseparable from the site, and which additionally constitute an obstacle: the inability to dig the soil where they are situated. As for the gardens, they presented in their entirety a real opportunity. « The site was complex and exciting, especially because of the presence of the crayères, says Clémence Duguit. We immediately thought of the line as a connecting thread». In fact, these « lines» are present on the building, with the columns in new peristyle and other elements. They also call to mind the rows of vines and, when they intertwine, the letter T, the graphic design which is seen on most of the bottles from the Maison Taittinger. « Poetry is important to the Taittinger family, it is therefore a dimension which we tried to integrate into our project» Cécile Allouis adds.
Taking the «line» as a reference, also makes it possible to delimit unique spaces and to reveal, sunk down, the ghostly existence of the cellars under the site. « We conceived these gardens as plant archaeology, which presents itself to the visitor as a negative of this underground world». In the grounds with extensive planted stretches and in the courtyard, an arrangement of two types of concrete, one of which includes slivers of bottle glass, allows revelation of the galleries. For the choice of planting which enlivens the gardens, priority was given to varieties suited to the soil and the climate, « to components which deliver a certain elegance, a sobriety, to the image of the Maison Taittinger», Clémence Duguit says. Nothing showy, nothing extravagant, colours which recall those on the labels of the bottles of the Maison Taittinger, to enliven the courtyard». Investigation of the archives has also revealed that in his era the famous English rose breeder, David Austin, had created for Claude Taittinger, the head of the Maison Taittinger at that time, a rose called Coniston® (Comtes de Champagne), the hues of which evoke those of the champagne wine. Under a new name, it will find a new place in the Saint-Nicaise gardens.
« We strived to design a garden that was simple but which could satisfy numerous functions, the landscape gardeners of the Triptyque Agency noted. The first is the welcoming of visitors, for whom we have produced benches made of low carbon concrete – an innovative technology with a reduced carbon footprint, laid out pots, designed recesses, and for whom everything was designed as an invitation to wander». They wanted this space to be « warm, welcoming». In this landscape of lines, the detail of some angles of the planters recalls the cut of the new columns conceived by Giovanni Pace in the renovation of the main building while the quarter moon rounding of the stone seats evokes certain old details of the building (canopy, cornice, ceiling, etc.). A creative dialogue is thus established between architecture and gardens. Then there are sufficiently expansive non-planted spaces, designed for holding receptions. Finally, Clémence Duguit explains, « we wanted to provide Vitalie and the Taittinger family with more secret, confidential places, where once finds a little more intimacy and can take the time to rest». These will be created in the coming months. Finally, the section of the garden planted with trees has likewise been redesigned and local varieties will be added in the undergrowth. In autumn, the planted lines of the grounds will reveal yellow and ochre hues, a verdant and gentle reminder of the champagne wine and of these few days when the vines display flamboyant colours before becoming dormant until the next year. A diverse palette, therefore, of images and sensations, to be discovered from the start of 2025.
