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Buy Wine from Ruppert Leroy
At the southernmost tip of the Champagne region, almost on the border with Burgundy, lies one of the most unusual and least understood areas on the Champenoise map: the Côte des Bar. Here, among rolling hills, clay and Kimmeridgian limestone soils, and a climate closer to that of Chablis than to that of Reims, we find one of the most personal, radical and profoundly coherent wineries on the current French sparkling wine scene: Ruppert Leroy.
From anonymous winegrowers to authors of terroir
The story begins at the end of the 20th century, when Bénédicte Ruppert and Emmanuel Leroy, both from outside the wine world, decided to take over the vineyard that Bénédicte's father used to cultivate. At the time, they had no intention of bottling or marketing under their own label; they were, like so many others in the region, winegrowers for a large maison. But they soon realised that their vineyard - located in the small village of Essoyes, home of Renoir's intimate landscapes - deserved a higher destiny. A wine with its own name.
The first thing they did was drastic: to completely eliminate any chemical intervention in the field. Since 2010, all the vineyards have been biodynamically farmed, with official certification. There are no tractors to bulldoze, no herbicides to simplify plant life in the soil. There are horses, there are herbal infusions, there is observation, there is listening. The vineyard is seen as a living, complex organism, not a grape factory.
No make-up: sincerity in each cuvée
The cellar, for its part, functions as a direct extension of the vineyard: no added sugar, no commercial yeasts, no filtration, no fining. The Champagnes of Ruppert Leroy are wines of the plot, of the vintage and of the truth. Each cuvée comes from a different vineyard and is vinified separately, without blending and without make-up. This is a radical departure from the classic Champagne model, based on blending to ensure a stable identity year after year. Here, on the contrary, each vintage is a different story. Sometimes sharp, sometimes raw, sometimes fiercely mineral.
The range is made up of a few labels, each with its own name: 'Fosse-Grely', the best known and perhaps most accessible parcel, a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, is a burst of crisp red fruit, chalky tension and subtle bubbles. 'Martin Fontaine', pure Chardonnay on white soils, is more vertical, citrusy, with saline echoes. les Cognaux', one of the rarest, is a display of pure Pinot Noir power, dense, dark, even wild in its youth. In the best years, there is also '11, 12, 13', a blend of several vintages and micro-plots, where the house plays with a freer elaboration, almost like a declaration of principles. All these cuvées are brut nature, without dosage, which requires impeccable grapes and vinification with no margin for error.
Precise nature, wines with nerve
One of the most fascinating aspects of Ruppert-Leroy is that, although they are part of the increasingly influential trend of natural Champagne, their wines do not seek provocation, nor easy aromatic diversion. There is no whiff of cider or wet bread. There is precision, nerve, soil. The bubbles are very fine, almost imperceptible. The fruit never imposes itself; it is always accompanied by a sensation of structure, of mineral architecture. These are wines that do not seek to please everyone, but which are never forgotten.
The small family winery works only about 4 hectares. This means that the total annual production is only a few thousand bottles. And yet, in barely a decade, they have managed to get their Champagnes drunk in the most influential wine bars in Paris, New York or Tokyo. There is no luxury marketing or gilded labels here: only the prestige earned bottle by bottle, glass by glass, among those who know how to read between the lines.
Time, not urgency: the ethics behind the wine
Perhaps the most telling anecdote is this: when a Japanese importer asked them to increase production to meet demand, Emmanuel replied with a curt smile: "The vines need time. So do we." No urgency, no concessions.
In a world that often reduces Champagne to a symbol of status and repetition, Ruppert-Leroy represents a quiet revolution. A return to the earth, to time, to the essential. His wines are more than bubbles: they are expressions of the climate, the soil, the year. And above all, of a way of being in the world
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Buy Wine from Ruppert Leroy
At the southernmost tip of the Champagne region, almost on the border with Burgundy, lies one of the most unusual and least understood areas on the Champenoise map: the Côte des Bar. Here, among rolling hills, clay and Kimmeridgian limestone soils, and a climate closer to that of Chablis than to that of Reims, we find one of the most personal, radical and profoundly coherent wineries on the current French sparkling wine scene: Ruppert Leroy.
From anonymous winegrowers to authors of terroir
The story begins at the end of the 20th century, when Bénédicte Ruppert and Emmanuel Leroy, both from outside the wine world, decided to take over the vineyard that Bénédicte's father used to cultivate. At the time, they had no intention of bottling or marketing under their own label; they were, like so many others in the region, winegrowers for a large maison. But they soon realised that their vineyard - located in the small village of Essoyes, home of Renoir's intimate landscapes - deserved a higher destiny. A wine with its own name.
The first thing they did was drastic: to completely eliminate any chemical intervention in the field. Since 2010, all the vineyards have been biodynamically farmed, with official certification. There are no tractors to bulldoze, no herbicides to simplify plant life in the soil. There are horses, there are herbal infusions, there is observation, there is listening. The vineyard is seen as a living, complex organism, not a grape factory.
No make-up: sincerity in each cuvée
The cellar, for its part, functions as a direct extension of the vineyard: no added sugar, no commercial yeasts, no filtration, no fining. The Champagnes of Ruppert Leroy are wines of the plot, of the vintage and of the truth. Each cuvée comes from a different vineyard and is vinified separately, without blending and without make-up. This is a radical departure from the classic Champagne model, based on blending to ensure a stable identity year after year. Here, on the contrary, each vintage is a different story. Sometimes sharp, sometimes raw, sometimes fiercely mineral.
The range is made up of a few labels, each with its own name: 'Fosse-Grely', the best known and perhaps most accessible parcel, a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, is a burst of crisp red fruit, chalky tension and subtle bubbles. 'Martin Fontaine', pure Chardonnay on white soils, is more vertical, citrusy, with saline echoes. les Cognaux', one of the rarest, is a display of pure Pinot Noir power, dense, dark, even wild in its youth. In the best years, there is also '11, 12, 13', a blend of several vintages and micro-plots, where the house plays with a freer elaboration, almost like a declaration of principles. All these cuvées are brut nature, without dosage, which requires impeccable grapes and vinification with no margin for error.
Precise nature, wines with nerve
One of the most fascinating aspects of Ruppert-Leroy is that, although they are part of the increasingly influential trend of natural Champagne, their wines do not seek provocation, nor easy aromatic diversion. There is no whiff of cider or wet bread. There is precision, nerve, soil. The bubbles are very fine, almost imperceptible. The fruit never imposes itself; it is always accompanied by a sensation of structure, of mineral architecture. These are wines that do not seek to please everyone, but which are never forgotten.
The small family winery works only about 4 hectares. This means that the total annual production is only a few thousand bottles. And yet, in barely a decade, they have managed to get their Champagnes drunk in the most influential wine bars in Paris, New York or Tokyo. There is no luxury marketing or gilded labels here: only the prestige earned bottle by bottle, glass by glass, among those who know how to read between the lines.
Time, not urgency: the ethics behind the wine
Perhaps the most telling anecdote is this: when a Japanese importer asked them to increase production to meet demand, Emmanuel replied with a curt smile: "The vines need time. So do we." No urgency, no concessions.
In a world that often reduces Champagne to a symbol of status and repetition, Ruppert-Leroy represents a quiet revolution. A return to the earth, to time, to the essential. His wines are more than bubbles: they are expressions of the climate, the soil, the year. And above all, of a way of being in the world