The Champagne house of Pascal Agrapart is located in the celebrated village of Avize in the heart of the Côte de Blancs. The estate previously known as Agrapart & Fils was established in 1894, yet unlike many of the smaller grower Champagne houses that have only begun to estate bottle under their own labels in recent decades, the Agrapart family have done so since the inception of the domaine. The winery was founded by Arthur Agrapart, and is now run by the fifth generation of the family, Ambroise Agrapart, who joined his father Pascal in the 2018 vintage.
Pascal was the quiet force behind this esteemed property for four decades. Though he looks a bit like the actor Russel Crowe, his demeanor couldn't be more different than that of a celebrity. He is humble and soft-spoken, with the talents and wisdom of an experienced, impassioned vigneron. While certainly a "man of the earth" who enjoys spending time in the vineyards, Pascal is equally versed in the technical details of the cellar, where he explored and mastered his craft. He maintained the same commitment to excellence that earned this fine domaine its loyal customer base in France and beyond. While Agrapart wines long had a solid underground following, in the past decade, the wines have gained an international reputation. Pascal learned to maneuver in the limelight, quietly and humbly, of course. Today, he is looked up to and revered by some of the region's rising stars as sort of a professor emeritus who blazed the trail of quality and helped to set the stage for Champagne's cutting edge revolution. Among his admirers and the region's rising stars is Pascal's son, Ambroise.
While he is in daily discussions with his dad about happenings in the vineyard and cellar, Ambroise is solely charged with managing approximately 10 hectares of predominantly Chardonnay vineyards, the vast majority of which are Grand Cru in the heart of the Côte de Blancs (mostly in the villages of Avize, Oger, Cramant and Oiry). Additionally, a small percentage of Pinot Noir is planted north of Aÿ in Avenay-Val-d'Or, a well-known village in the days when Champagne produced still wines. Vines that were planted at the end of Pascal's father's career, have now reached 40-50 years of age. With complex juices from these coveted Pinot terroirs, Ambroise has added a Coteaux Champenois Rouge and a Rosé Champagne to the range, both released in 2025.
To ensure the highest possible quality, production has always been kept at an artisanal level, with quantities of no more than 5,400 cases produced in any given year. Vine age is among the oldest in the Côte de Blancs, with many of the Agrapart’s vineyards in excess of seventy years of age, and the average overall age of the vines is a healthy forty years old. The estate has also farmed organically for years, but has never really publicized it. For Pascal, this was merely the right way to farm, not a marketing fad to promote the wines. From these fine, old Chardonnay vineyards, Agrapart produces some of the most refined and complex wines to be found in the region.
The range starts with three NV cuvées: "Les 7 Crus" which is a mix of 90% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Noir from 1er and Grand Cru vineyards(from seven villages surrounding Avize, "Terroirs" which hails from 100% Grand Cru Chardonnay holdings from Avize and its neighbors, and "Complantée" - a blend of six varieties co-planted in Avize. Pascal theorized that as the vines become more established, the Avize terroir will overshadow the grape varieties. For now, it is an intriguing and racy wine that pleases intellectually as much as gustatorily.
Next in the range are three vintage-dated parcellaires cuvées from what the family considers the three main terroirs of Avize: up-slope, downslope, and the middle or “crux” of the two. The entire village of Avize is dominated by a subsoil of chalky limestone, and this ‘mother rock’ is covered with varying amounts of clay. Due to the specific geological formation of these vineyards, there is uniquely more clay at the top of the hillside near the forest, and less toward the bottom of the slope. The more clay there is on the surface, the more powerful and broad the wines tend to be, though always with a fine base of chalky minerality.
From the lower part of the hill where it is relatively flat and the soils are basically pure chalk, Agrapart produces “Minéral”, the brightest and most taught cuvée. At the top of the hill where there is more clay, he produces his most powerful wine, “L’Avizoise”. And in the middle of the slope, in a special, old-vine single vineyard known as La Fosse that has a mix of both soil types and is worked solely with a horse, Agrapart makes "Venus," a wine that is perhaps the ultimate expression of Avize. To emphasize these terroir differences, all three cuvées are vinified exactly the same way (fermented in used 600-liter barrels) and finished with very little dosage.
The Agrapart offering is rounded out by a micro-cuvee known as "Expérience," the word for "experiment" in French and rarest of the Agrapart wines. Experience is made through a risky and complicated process that includes only grapes - no yeast, sulfur or sugar are added at any point in vinification, ageing or at disgorgement. To accomplish this, Agrapart takes a base wine and adds unfermented pressed grape juice from the following vintage as the prise de mousse to launch the secondary fermentation. Today, many producers in the region are experimenting with this approach, now dubbed The Agrapart Method.
The Champagne Agrapart lineup includes:
Les 7 Crus - A superb non-vintage bottling that beautifully synthesizes the pure and opulent fruit of top quality chardonnay vineyards in the Côte de Blancs with a racy, structured minerality that gives the wine superb length and cut. It is delicious out of the blocks, but really will easily keep ten to fifteen years.
Terroirs - Non-vintage blend of têtes de cuvée from terroirs in Avize, Oger, Cramant and Oiry. A fine, elegant, yet powerful Champagne…dare we say a “poor mans’s Clos de Mesnil”?
Complantée - Non-vintage blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Blanc, Arbane, Petit Meslier and Chardonnay all from the village of Avize in the vineyard of "La Fosse".
Minéral - This is a single vintage blend of téte de cuvée selections from two parcels located at the bottom of the hillside, planted in pure chalk; Les Champboutons in Avize and Les Bionnes in Cramant. These vineyards have 40+ year old vines and produce the most mineral-driven, laser-like wine of the Agrapart lineup.
Vénus - Vintage cuvée made from a single, 0.3 hectare vineyard named La Fosse that was planted in 1959. It is located in the middle of the hillside and has both the chalk of the hillsides at the top of the parcel and the heavier clay over limestone at the bottom. The soils are tilled by a horse named Vénus. The wine shows stunning depth and richness combined with exceptional freshness and minerality.
L’Avizoise – Vintage cuvée made from two of the estate’s oldest Grand Cru parcels, Les Robards and La Voie D’Epernay, each with 50+ year old vines at the top of the hillside near the forest where there is the presence of clay soils over the limestone subsoil. L’Avizoise is the most powerful wine in the lineup.
Experience - What began as an experiment of Pascal's has become one of the family's most limited and coveted cuvées. Made only from grapes, with no yeast, sugar or dosage and just fresh, unfermented grape juice to launch the secondary fermentation, "Experience" is not made every year, but only when two successive vintages create the ideal conditions.