Château de Fère ★★★★★

The first thing we noticed on our way to the hotel from Paris was that the rolling hills and valleys of the region are swathed in grape vines, which at this time of year are all magnificent shades of golden-red. This is the home of Champagne, after all and, as we learnt during our trip, the locals are exceedingly proud of their renowned bubbly drink. No sparkling wine here – Only the real McCoy! The château is also the real McCoy. This is not just a stately French home, as so many châteaux seem to be. Here you get two castles, complete with towers and turrets, a (dry) moat and a stately viaduct, for the price of one! The first in picturesque ruins dating back to the 13th century and the second, built in the 1900s, which houses the hotel and spa.

The 29 spacious rooms and suites are all individually decorated with a touch of Nippon design. (The owner Richard Bliah, a talented French architect, now lives in Japan with his wife). Luxurious warm-coloured fabrics reflecting the turning shades of the grape vines and the leaves in the surrounding forest drape the taupe walls and windows that look out on the majestic ruins of the original castle. Each room has its own unique bathroom.

After settling in, we gathered in the gardens for our first activity: the Champagne Olympic Games! In teams, we competed against each other to see who had the best disgorging technique (a process that involves removing sediment from the bottle so that all that is left is crystal clear champagne). We tested our ‘noses’ in a tasting contest and learnt how to correctly crack open a bottle of bubbly – with an actual sword (or sabre), in keeping with old tradition. The fourth round of the contest proved just how much champagne is relished around here – champagne bowling. You guessed it, instead of pins, we knocked down champagne bottles. It would take me quite a few years of Christmases and New Years to collect enough bottles to play the same game back at home!

We then set off on an orienteering trail that allowed us to learn more about the château, its history and surroundings, with no history textbooks in sight. Map in hand, we set off in teams on the lookout for clues and puzzles that would help us find the hidden treasure at the end of the game. Good fun was had by all!

Dinner that night was served in the oh-so-French dining room of the gourmet restaurant. The décor is sumptuous: gorgeous woodwork, chandeliers and period furnishings set off by quirky paintings representing the works of local scribe Jean de la Fontaine whose poems based on Aesop’s fables are learnt by heart by school children throughout France.

We were up at the crack of dawn the following day to go hot-air ballooning over the neighbouring forests and fields of vines. In the distance we could make out the towers of the Notre-Dame cathedral in the city of Reims where French kings came to be crowned from the 14th to the 19th century. From above, the patchwork of red, yellow, orange and burgundy was stunning. Back at the chateau, we played a game the French call, le jeu de l’oie, a sort of snakes and ladders that had been adapted to the region using modern day technology (smartphones were put to the test). Hysterical laughter was had by all, especially when we were required to learn a traditional dance that the ladies and knights of the castle performed together in days of old.

On our third day, after a well-earned lie-in, we spent the morning either trying out beauty treatments in the spa, swimming in the heated outdoor swimming pool or testing our aim during a session of laser ball trap. We visited the cave and chose a bottle or two of wine to accompany the cocktail dinner that evening (which, to our astonishment, we were going to be preparing ourselves with the help of the restaurant’s kitchen brigade!) That evening we put our thinking caps on and stepped into the shoes of Hercule Poirot for a murder mystery evening, also organised by the chateau.

Our bags were a lot heavier on the way home than on the way here (the glass used for champagne bottles has to be rather thick to handle the built up pressure within)! Our office party this year is certainly going to be a lot more convivial and bubbly than it usually is thanks to our fabulous four days in the Château de Fère!