Drappier, Rosé de Saignée Brut NV - 75cl

Most pink Champagne is red wine blended into white. This one is not. Drappier bleed the juice off the skins — saignée — after a two-day vatting of destemmed Pinot Noir, so the colour arrives through maceration rather than as an addition at blending. You can see the difference before you taste anything. This is a deep, cherry-tinged pink, nothing like the pale salmon most houses aim for.

Urville sits in the Côte des Bar, the southern outpost of Champagne that is closer to Chablis than to Reims, on Kimmeridgian limestone from the same Jurassic seam. The Drappier family have farmed here since 1808 and work cellars the Cistercians of Clairvaux dug in 1152. Pinot Noir is the local grape and the house's whole argument — this cuvée is 100% of it. Michel Drappier's other signature is restraint with sulphur, and the dosage is kept low to match: 5.5 g/l on the current release. Malolactic goes through, nothing is filtered or fined, and a small slice of the wine, 5%, is raised in large wooden casks.

Fruit is the point here. Wild strawberry and raspberry, stony rather than sweet, with crushed cherry stone sitting behind. There is a light tannic grip you never find in blended rosé — that is the two days on skins showing up. Peppery on the finish, faintly herbal, properly dry.

How to Serve

Drappier say 7°C. I would give it nine or ten; much colder and the raspberry disappears. White-wine glass, not a flute. This has enough substance to sit on the dinner table rather than stay in the hall with the canapés.

Where to Drink It

Noble Rot, which was more or less built for wines like this. Planque in Haggerston if you want it alongside something charred. Dandy on Maltby Street for the Saturday version.

Food Pairings

Pink lamb, grilled over coals — Drappier suggest it themselves and they are right. The phenolic edge stands up to the meat while the acidity deals with the fat. Charcuterie is the easier weeknight answer.