Champagne’s Servants Join the Masters(3)
“But I understood I had to learn the terroir of my village,” he said. “A big problem in Champagne is that wines are easy to make by recipe. It’s much harder to learn the taste of your vineyards. That’s why it’s called Vouette & Sorbée rather than Bertrand Gautherot.”
His first vintage was 2001 — only 2,000 bottles, he said, in case he had to drink it all himself. He’s now up to around 30,000 bottles, which all seem as if they are fine wines that just happen to be effervescent rather than simply celebratory bubbly. Perhaps his most unusual Champagne is the Saignée de Sorbée, a rosé that emphasizes the lovely spicy fruit of the pinot noir grape and its exuberant aromas. It’s a beautifully fragrant, exuberant Champagne, with spicy, smoky flavors.
The Côte des Bar seems rife with small producers waiting for discovery. Some, frankly, are rustic, not yet ready for prime time. Others, like Dominique Moreau, whose label, Marie-Courtin, is named for her grandmother, make breathtakingly gorgeous, elegant Champagnes in such minute quantities that they can be frustrating to try to find.
While the bubbling up of talent in the Aube is clear, Mr. Drappier prefers a historical perspective. With an annual production of 1.6 million bottles, Drappier is the size of a small grande marque, like Pol Roger or Billecart-Salmon. Its facility in Urville sits over an original cellar that traces back to 1152.
“The Aube was the wealthiest of the Champagne regions in the Middle Ages, and Troyes was the capital,” said Mr. Drappier, who is the seventh-generation Drappier to lead the house.
“Before phylloxera,” he said, referring to the pest that destroyed European grapevines in the late 19th century, “there were many more vineyards in the Aube than in the Marne.”
Today, Drappier’s Champagnes are discernibly more mainstream than those of the smaller producers, dry and refreshing with full-bodied, sometimes smoky flavors.
Mr. Drappier suggests that the rise of the Aube is due partly to the new prosperity in the entire Champagne region, which allowed growers to start making their own wine; to better education, which contributed to the arrival of dynamic young winemakers in the region; and to the changing tastes of consumers, who now understand that Champagne is more than simply a luxury good.
“Terroir used to be considered rude in Champagne,” he said. “It was all about blending and dosage. Now we say we are from the Côte des Bar, and we are proud of it.”
