Rosé de Saignée

Drappier Champagne – Rosé de Saignée – Brut

The Drappier Champagne Rosé de Saignée Brut is a magnificent rosé Champagne from the Drappier house in Urville, Champagne.

The Drappier Champagne Rosé de Saignée is a Champagne made from 100% Pinot Noir. The raspberry-colored cuvée, bottled in a dark bottle to protect it from light, has a lively mousse with fine bubbles and entices with the scent of a whole basket full of red berries and fruits, such as raspberries, strawberries, and cherries; the rosé also reveals something spicy and peppery on the nose, along with a delicate scent of violets. The Drappier Champagne Rosé de Saignée is harmonious, a sparkling wine with great structure and good length that ends in a mineral finish.

Drappier Champagne – lots of Pinot Noir, little sulfur

The Drappier family has lived and worked in the south of Champagne in the Côte des Bar region, in northeastern France, since 1808. There are a good 100 hectares of this special terroir, which is characterized by a cool climate, lime-rich soils interspersed with Kimmeridgian marl, and optimal hillside orientations. The grapes for this rosé Champagne come from the Val de Demoiselles.

After harvesting the grapes, Champagne Drappier takes great care to produce the most elegant and aromatic wines as naturally as possible. Upon arrival at the winery, the Pinot Noir grapes remain on the skins for two days to allow the red color to be released from the skins before they are gently pressed using mechanical low-pressure presses. Maceration is a specialty of the Drappier Champagne house, as white-pressed Pinot Noir base wine is usually blended with red wine to produce a rosé Champagne (rosé assemblage). Here, however, a rosé base wine is created from Pinot Noir, which then becomes Champagne during the second fermentation. Naturally, only the cuvée, the first part of the pressing, is used for the Rosé de Saignée Champagne. The grape must is handled with great care to avoid oxidation and is processed without pumps, using only gravity. The base wine is fermented with natural yeasts and aged in stainless steel tanks, with 5% maturing for one year in French oak casks. The cuvée has naturally undergone malolactic fermentation, meaning the malic acid in the wine has been converted into milder lactic acid, which provides a special mouthfeel with a slightly creamy structure and adds further complexity to the Champagne Rosé de Saignée.

To carry out one of the most important steps in the production of a good Champagne: blending, i.e., combining the various base wines for the second fermentation, three generations come together at Drappier and contribute their taste and lived experience: grandfather André Nicolas, father Michel, and the grandchildren Charline, who heads sales and marketing, Hugo, who today works as the cellar master at Drappier, and Antoine, who manages the vineyards again with the help of horses.

Of course, the Drappier Rosé Champagne undergoes the second fermentation in traditional bottle fermentation: according to the Méthode Champenoise. The Drappier Rosé de Saignée is released onto the market after 30 months of bottle aging. The sparkling wine from France is unfiltered and uncolored. And Michel Drappier is known for using only as little sulfur (less than 30mg/l) as necessary.

Rosé de Saignée – a sparkling wine and its values

• Côte des Bar
• 100% Pinot Noir
  
• Dosage 6g/l
• Brut
• 12% vol. alcohol