Champagne Marie-Nõelle Ledru - Grand Cru Brut

The wines from Marie-Noelle Ledru are some of the most coveted bottles in all of Champagne: The ultimate insider’s wines. Since 1984, Marie-Noelle (the fourth generation of her winemaking family that began producing estate wines in 1946) has been handcrafting some of the most expressive, terroir-focused Champagnes in Ambonnay. And when I say handcrafted, I am not being trite: She is a one-woman show, literally farming, riddling, disgorging, bottling and labeling the wines by hand herself.

Champagne Marie-Noelle Ledru is based in the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay where she farms a mere 2 hectares without the use of herbicides or insecticides, working her vines as naturally as possible. The wines are vinified in stainless steel tanks, are made without filtration and undergo a natural malolactic fermentation. The non-vintage wines are aged for about three years on their lees, the vintage wine is aged for five years. Incredibly Marie hand-disgorges all her bottles without the use of sulfur.

Marie-Noelle produces a miniscule amount of cult Champagnes. Since 2016, she has been retired, though she continues to blend and bottle wines from her cellar, rationing out her remaining inventory to her best customers. These wines are almost as close to handmade as you can get in Champagne. The resulting quality is second to none, and arguably the top examples of Ambonnay Grand Cru.