Champagne Drappier – Sparkling Luxury
Champagne Drappier is a family-run Champagne house in France with a long tradition. Since 1808, the family has lived in Urville, a small village in the Champagne region of Côte de Bar. The cloth merchant Rémy Drappier from Reims was the first to bring sparkling luxury to the Drappier house, buying 55 hectares of vineyards in prime locations such as Belle Haie, Val Demoiselle or Sendrée, as well as historic limestone cellars, the oldest of which was built in 1152, and subsequently dedicated himself with great passion to sparkling wine production.
Today, the Drappier family, in its eighth generation, cultivates over 100 hectares of vineyards in the south of Champagne, predominantly consisting of chalky soils interspersed with Kimmeridgian marl. This special soil formation within the Paris Basin was primarily planted with Pinot Noir, the grape variety that gives Drappier Champagne Côte d’or, the flagship of the house with its distinctive yellow label, its unique minerality and coppery appearance. The favorite champagne of Charles de Gaulle, which was the house champagne at the Elysée Palace during his term in office, is not only popular in France; Luciano Pavarotti had this sparkling wine served at his wedding.
Champagne Drappier – Winemakers for Eight Generations
Often, the entrepreneurial decisions of the Drappier family have set trends for the entire region. For example, Michel's grandfather, George Collot, planted Pinot Noir instead of Chardonnay after the great frost in 1957, for which he was ridiculed and nicknamed Papa Pinot. Today, three-quarters of the Côte de Bar region is planted with Pinot Noir.
Michel Drappier, who has managed the Champagne house Drappier since 1979, adopted a natural approach to Champagne production early on and significantly reduced the addition of sulfur, thereby prompting a rethinking among many Champagne winemakers. The Champagnes produced in this way have more natural colors, a rich, sometimes almost coppery gold, and develop their aromas much better than with a higher sulfur addition. Furthermore, the low sulfur allows for a particularly slow bottle fermentation at low temperatures in historic limestone cellars, which leads to an extremely fine and subtle effervescence. For the Drappier Brut Nature, Michel refrains from adding any dosage, allowing for an unadorned, terroir-driven, bone-dry Champagne that is highly popular among Champagne connoisseurs.
Although most of the vineyard area is planted with classic Champagne grape varieties such as Pinot Noir (70%), Chardonnay and Meunier, Michel values providing space for the almost forgotten, but still approved for Champagne production, grape varieties such as Arbane, Petit Meslier and Blanc Vrai, and created the Champagne Quattuor from them together with Chardonnay.
Even if we only procure large bottles beyond Magnum for customers upon request, this special feature of Champagne Drappier is definitely worth mentioning, because Drappier is still the only Champagne producer that carries out the second fermentation including riddling and disgorgement in the individual large bottles, and not, as is otherwise common, transfers several bottles of finished Champagne into a Magnum (1.5l), Jeroboam (3l) or Balthazar (12l). Anyone who has had the pleasure of enjoying a glass of aged Champagne from a Melchisédec (30l) bottle knows why. Champagne Drappier is sparkling pleasure for life's special moments.
