MAY 2025
Bubbles on the Cutting Edge: Two Brut Natures from the Aube
The Aube has always sat apart. Tucked in the southern reaches of Champagne’s official map, it’s closer to Chablis than to Épernay or Reims. For much of modern Champagne history, that meant marginality: the region was considered peripheral, a workhorse source of Pinot Noir destined for blends, not headlines.
It is different. The soils are more likely to be Chablis-esque Kimmeridgian limestone than the pure chalk of Épernay – unsurprisingly, given the geography. There is no central mountain, like in Reims, that provides an overarching theme to which the region’s villages give individual voice. Rather, it is a land of deep valleys and isolated hills; idiosyncratic microclimates and varied exposures that ensure there is always something that will ripen – and always something to worry about.
The Aube is truly “the other Champagne.” But in the last twenty years, this particular margin has become a cutting edge. Outside the gravity well of the grandes maisons, the Aube’s producers escaped the rigid traditions and the hidebound marketing demands that define so much of Champagne’s production.
It has become, especially in the southernmost (and most famous) sub-region, the Côte des Bar, a laboratory for some of the most dynamic Champagne experimentation. Growers here were among the first to embrace organic farming, to work to minimize sulfur, and to bottle wines with no dosage at all. Almost all center their wines on estate-grown fruit.
Contemporary Champagne legends like Cédric Bouchard (Roses de Jeanne), Vouette & Sorbée (Bertrand Gautherot), and Marie-Courtin (Dominique Moreau), hail from the Côte des Bar. But the talent pool is deep, and the region runs wide, and there is so much more to love in the Aube than just its most collectable vignerons .
This month’s selections capture two distinct faces of this movement in the Aube, which paint a picture of both the region’s incredible breadth, and also its unifying spirit. The first, Drappier, is a storied, independent Maison based right in the heart of the Côte des Bar, a house which has embraced grower values from within. The other, Jacques Lassaigne, is a cult producer whose chalk-drenched hilltop vineyard in Montgueux is arguably the Aube’s most extreme outpost – an outlier among outliers.
EXTRA BRUT PICK NO. 1
Drappier is a beloved institution in France but a bit of an insider’s wine in America: it makes appearances at collectors dinners and on the wine lists of top restaurants (this bottling is on the wine list at Aldo Sohm wine bar right now for $35/glass). It balances a classic sensibility with a truly cutting edge expression.
A family-run Maison based in the heart of the Côte des Bar since 1808, Drappier has been estate-bottling Champagne since the 1930s (very early for the region), and adopted organic farming and low-intervention practices long before either was fashionable. They were, in particular, early to explore non-dosage wines.
It was a natural fit, given the local terroir and history of Pinot-focussed wines. The soils in Urville are based on Kimmeridgian limestone — the same clay-limestone mix that defines much of nearby Chablis. But the climate in the Côte des Bar is a little warmer, and unlike Chablis it has a history of growing Pinot Noir.
That combination of geology and warmth give the best local wines both power and a certain savory depth. Drappier was able to take advantage of that balance to make a 100% Pinot Noir with no dosage and no malolactic fermentation that is a model of restraint and purity while never sliding into austerity. Ripe fruit, careful pressing, and long lees aging give it breadth and texture; the clay-limestone soils add spice and earthiness. This is Blanc de Noirs at its most transparent, full of personality and grounded in minerality. Driving and focused, but never lacking in joy.
Drappier didn’t stumble into this success; the style was neither an accident nor copycat trend chasing. Their choices around dosage, sulfur, and farming are the product of long engagement with the land and an unusual independence of vision. This is a Maison that, in many ways, behaves like a small grower. It is both a rarity among Maisons in this respect, and a rarity among top Aube producers, as a Maison. Exceptional in every way possible!
When you see a Champagne like this on a wine list like Aldo Sohm’s, you know it’s a natural for pairing with a wide variety of foods. The freshness and acidity make it perfect with oysters and any light snack. But the Pinot depth makes it a surprising champion with dishes as heavy as oven roasted sausages and even steak. Of course, you don’t need anything particularly fancy: if you want to open a bottle and have only a bag of potato chips to snack on, take our word for it – you won’t be disappointed!
Leclerc-Briant has been many things over the years — a traditional négociant house, an early pioneer of biodynamic viticulture, and now, under the stewardship of winemaker Hervé Jestin, a leading name in Champagne’s next wave of sustainability-driven, terroir-conscious producers.
The 2019 vintage is a turning point for the house: expressive, elegant, and focused, but with the quiet power that only a top vintage Champagne can deliver. It’s composed of 40% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, and 20% Meunier, all organically farmed. Fermentation takes place partly in oak, adding texture and spice, and the wine ages for more than three years on the lees before disgorgement. Grapes are sourced from all three of the regions that converge on Epernay, including some owned directly by Leclerc-Briant.
As you might expect, this blending enhances the balance of the wine and ensures that you get many of the different nuances that great Champagne provides: baked apple, lemon cream, brioche, chalk and the like. It’s structured but supple, with a persistent finish and just enough dosage (4.5 g/L) to round things out without softening the edges.
This is a Champagne that speaks to what a small, dynamic House is capable of.
EXTRA BRUT PICK NO. 2
If Drappier represents the quiet radicalism of tradition reimagined, Jacques Lassaigne is pure iconoclast. Based in Montgueux—a lone chalk hill near Troyes—Emmanuel Lassaigne (Jacques’ son) farms some of the most distinctive Chardonnay terroir in all of Champagne: steep, sun-drenched slopes that yield fruit of remarkable ripeness and expressive range.
If that sounds like a far cry from the Pinot Noir on Kimmeridgian soils that made the Côte des Bar famous, it is. The chalk, the Chardonnay—none of that fits the Côte des Bar mold. And indeed, though Montgueux lies within the Aube it sits outside the Côte des Bar, both geologically and stylistically.
And yet, Lassaigne is such a quintessential example of Champagne's new-wave spirit that he’s often grouped with the Côte des Bar all the same. Labels aside, this is a wine that could only come from the far edges of Champagne. It’s personal, extreme, and completely unforgettable.
The site is often compared to Montrachet for the ripeness and exoticism it coaxes from Chardonnay, all while remaining unmistakably Champagne: electric, lifted, deeply mineral. All that sunshine lets Lassaigne craft wines with native yeasts, minimal sulfur, and no dosage, without sacrificing texture or generosity. The wine is exuberant on the nose, saline and rich on the palate, and still laser-focused at its core.
Like many in Champagne’s vanguard, Lassaigne works this way not to be provocative, but to faithfully transmit what’s in the vineyard. His farming is biodynamic, his cellar work minimal, and the results are precise, expressive, and deeply site-specific
Like the Drappier, this wine has become a favorite of restaurants as fine as three-Michelin-star Le Bernardin, where it’s currently paired with a dish of “Poached Green Asparagus, Vegetable ‘Caviar’ White Balsamic-Herb-Seaweed Vinaigrette.” But don’t worry if you’re fresh out of vegetable ‘caviar’ – you’ll also find it at pioneering natural wine bar, The Ten Bells, where you can enjoy it with a simple plate of charcuterie.
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GROWER CHAMPAGNE
A guide to the best bubbles in the world and what makes them different from the Grandes Marques
Champagne is the world’s most famous sparkling wine. Hailing from the Champagne regions of France, its biggest names are among the biggest names in wine: Moet, Dom Perignon, Veuve Clicquot, Cristal.
But there’s another side to Champagne: a universe of small-scale producers preserving ancient family farming traditions and bottling wines you’ve never heard of.
These are the Grower Champagnes.
