Three siblings, a block of stone, and behind them vines stretching to the horizon.
Champagne Drappier in Urville is in the middle of a generational handover: Hugo won an award in 2025 for his Fromenteau Champagne, Antoine ploughs with a horse and Charline looks after marketing. Their father Michel, at the helm since 1979, was one of the first to take the plunge with Zero Dosage. The cellars beneath their feet were built on the orders of Saint Bernard in 1152. Pinot Noir accounts for 70 per cent of the vineyard area, and the Côte des Bar is its heartland. We have the
Brut Nature without added sulphur, the
Rosé Brut Nature, the
Clarevallis Extra Brut, the
Quattuor IV and the award-winning
Trop m'en faut from Fromenteau in stock, and for a first acquaintance also a
tasting set of four bottles.
Beneath the vaults of Saint Bernard
The staircase leads down into another age. In
1152 the Cistercians of Clairvaux had these vaults built to store the wine from the surrounding vineyards. The stone arches have outlasted wars, revolutions and phylloxera epidemics. André Drappier bought them from the commune in 1950, a foundation that is more than architecture. Today these cellars hold Champagnes that do without
stabilisation and filtration, maturing at a constant 10 degrees, as patiently as 900 years ago.
"Père Pinot" and the return of a grape
In the 1930s Georges Collot, Michel's maternal grandfather, was the first to replant
Pinot Noir in the Côte des Bar. His neighbours thought him mad and soon called him "Père Pinot". Today this grape covers
70 per cent of the 62 hectares. The soil, upper
Kimmeridgian limestone, is geologically related to nearby Chablis and gives the wines a mineral edge. The
Brut Nature Sans Soufre shows where this can lead: pure Pinot Noir, without dosage, without added sulphur.
Forgotten grapes, new awards
More than twenty years ago Michel Drappier began bringing back vanished grape varieties:
Arbanne, Petit Meslier, Blanc Vrai, Fromenteau. The
Quattuor unites all four in equal parts, a Champagne like a living archive. The
Trop m'en faut!, made from 100 per cent Fromenteau, won Hugo the prize for best Champagne at the Master Winemaker Awards in 2025. André, who died in March 2025 in his 99th year, lived to see his grandson's triumph.
Carbon neutral since 2016
In 2016 Drappier became the first Champagne house to achieve
carbon neutrality. 17 hectares are certified organic, with more in conversion. Sheep graze between the vines, and Antoine ploughs the biodynamic parcels with his draught horse. In Les Riceys, just a few kilometres to the south,
Olivier Horiot works on his biodynamic cuvées with similar conviction; the Côte des Bar is becoming the epicentre of a new movement in Champagne.
