Drappier

Drappier is a family Champagne house in Urville, a village of a few hundred people in the Côte des Bar, the southern end of Champagne in the Aube department. It is a long way from Reims and Épernay, geographically and in temperament. François Drappier settled in Urville and began farming vines here in 1808, and the family has not left since. Michel Drappier runs the house today with his wife Sylvie, and since 2016 the eighth generation has been working alongside them: Charline, Hugo, and Antoine, who looks after the organic vineyards and still ploughs some of them behind a horse.

The cellars are older than the family. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had them built in 1152 and they are still in use. That is a good story, and here is the part that matters more. The Aube sits on Kimmeridgian limestone from the late Jurassic, the same seam that runs under Chablis Grand Cru, and it is Pinot Noir country rather than Chardonnay country. Drappier's plantings are roughly 70 per cent Pinot Noir, 15 per cent Meunier and 9 per cent Chardonnay, with the remaining 6 per cent given over to four old Champagne varieties that most houses gave up on: Arbanne, Petit Meslier, Blanc Vrai and Fromenteau. Michel's maternal grandfather, Georges Collot, was known locally as le Père Pinot for championing the grape here in the 1930s, and his mother Micheline was making rosé from 100 per cent Pinot Noir back in 1968.

What sets Drappier apart is how little they add. They use some of the lowest sulphur levels in Champagne, between 30 and 45 milligrams per litre, which is under a quarter of what the rules permit, and one cuvée is made with none added at all. Dosage is kept low across the range. Twenty-seven hectares are certified organic by Ecocert (seventeen certified since 2017, ten more in conversion). In 2016 they became the first carbon-neutral estate in the region, with nearly 2,000 square metres of solar panels covering three-quarters of the energy they need, a bottle 15 per cent lighter than the Champagne standard, and electric tractors in the vineyard. They also say they are the only house that carries out the second fermentation, riddling and disgorging in every bottle size they sell, from half-bottles up to a 30-litre Melchizedek, rather than decanting from standard bottles into the big formats.

The Carte d'Or is the house's calling card, created by André and Micheline Drappier in 1952 and led by 80 per cent Pinot Noir. The Premier Cru Brut sits alongside it. The Brut Nature is zero dosage and 100 per cent Pinot Noir, and it is the clearest statement of what this house believes.

Above those sit Grande Sendrée, the prestige cuvée from their oldest parcel, the Charles de Gaulle bottling, and the two certified-organic cuvées, Clarevallis and Quattuor. The good-value non-vintage Champagnes are not the whole house.