MICHELIN-level “insider’s” Champagne with 24 years of age
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1999 Lelarge-Pugeot Extra Brut Raymond Lelarge 750 ml
| $75 | per bottle | |
- Curated by unrivaled experts
- Choose your delivery date
- Temperature controlled shipping options
- Get credited back if a wine fails to impress
Near-Impossible To Source…At Any Price
From a small insider-favorite Champagne house featured at MICHELIN-starred restaurants like SingleThread Farms and St. Helena’s PRESS, this tête de cuvée was just disgorged in 2022. Now, it’s showing a profound complexity and gorgeous bouquet—the kind of stunning bubbly that every wine lover should experience, delivering the sublime feeling you get from drinking a fully mature Champagne made from old-vine fruit.
The Lelarge family has been domaine-bottling since 1930, but right around the time this wine was made, huge changes to their farming practices were underway. Back in 1990, husband Dominique Lelarge and wife Dominique Pugeot resolved to abandon all herbicides and pesticides in their vineyards. Their winery was certified organic by ECOCERT in 2010, and these days they’re fully biodynamic, certified by Demeter, one of only 44 properties in Champagne so accredited.
This wine came to us from our genial friend and colleague Clémence Lelarge-Pugeot—she’s Dominique and Dominique’s eldest daughter, and she also happens to live in Sonoma County. She’s landed multiple placements at MICHELIN-starred restaurants, fashionable tables like The Plumed Horse and Angler. Her efforts have made this biodynamic grower an “in-the-know” house up and down the West Coast.
The Marne Valley town of Vrigny has become very well known for its Pinot Meunier. This is in part thanks to Egly-Ouriet, but also due to the efforts of the Lelarge-Pugeots. Accordingly, this wine is equal parts Meunier, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay, from the family’s oldest vines, their top wine named for their founding ancestor, Raymond Lelarge. They honored it by patiently aging it for 24 years, giving it a thrilling kaleidoscope of autolytic aromas like panettone dough and rye bread that overlay notes of honey and ginger.