Vintage Sparkling Wine from Champagne, France

Blend: 55% Pinot Noir and 45% Chardonnay

Winemaker Notes

This champagne presents itself in a ravishing pale yellow robe with topaz nuances. Time has used its patina to reveal the wine’s complexity. Hawthorn blends with acacia honey, beeswax and marzipan. When it is aerated, the wine resumes its murmurings, quince jelly meets raspberry jam and alternates with bergamot and warm brioche. On the palate it is invigorating, imposing and it teases the taste buds. The bead caresses and balances wild strawberry jam with ripe blood orange. This harmony is extended in a delicate minerality and a lovely bitterness in which hints of mandarin orange come through.

Wine Advocate – 94 Points

Disgorged in January 2019 with four grams per liter dosage, the 2009 Brut Grande Sendrée is still a little tightly wound after its recent disgorgement, but it already hints of the promise to come. Offering up an incipiently complex bouquet of crisp yellow orchard fruit, honeycomb, quinine, stone fruit pits and freshly baked bread, it’s full-bodied, deep and layered, with racy acids, a crisp core of fruit and a penetrating and delicately chalky finish. This may not possess quite as much potential for the long haul as the 2008, but it will also hit its peak of expressiveness sooner. Every time I taste Grande Sendrée, I wonder if Drappier might be the most underrated house in Champagne?

Food Pairing 

Pairs well with turbo poached with Dutch sauce or scallop carpaccio, Bresse poultry truffled with cream, and mature cheeses.