The Bay Area can't get enough of this Champagne
Lelarge-Pugeot Tradition has become the Bay Area's Champagne of the moment. It's irresistible in that way that only Champagne can be, smelling like toasted hazelnuts and tasting like honey-drizzled apricots, with tiny bubbles that electrify the tongue. The Tradition seems, all of a sudden, to be everywhere, from fine dining restaurants to casual wine bars.
'Tradition has become our house Champagne,' said Emma Drew, general manager at San Francisco's Biondivino wine shop. In the last two years, she said, the Lelarge-Pugeot Champagnes 'have really grown in scope and presence.'
This rising profile has a lot to do with the fact that one of the winery's family members, Clémence Lelarge, is a Bay Area local. From her home in Petaluma, Lelarge oversees U.S. sales for Champagne Lelarge-Pugeot, and she has become a fixture of the local wine scene. She hosts regular dinners and events at restaurants, collaborates on labels with a San Francisco artist and even picks up the occasional shift waiting tables at Valley in Sonoma.
'It's really cool to have an eight-generation Champagne producer in our community,' said Dennis Cantwell, owner of San Francisco's Palm City Wines and Bar Jabroni. 'It's such a unique thing.'
Even from across the world, Lelarge exerts a strong influence over her family's business, having pushed for a lower-intervention approach to winemaking, experimental techniques and a greater focus on the overlooked grape variety Pinot Meunier. She's become a vocal advocate of biodynamic and organic farming in Champagne, a region that's been reluctant to move away from synthetic herbicides.
'When I started working with my parents, some of our wines weren't necessarily the types of wines I enjoyed,' Lelarge said. 'I want to make wines that are so vibrant, fruity, flavorful, but have a sense of acidity that makes you want to keep drinking.'
With her parents and brother, she has elevated Lelarge-Pugeot to one of the most revered grower-producers in Champagne — revered especially in California, which is now the largest market for the family's wines.
Two centuries in Champagne
The Lelarge family's winegrowing history begins in 1799, when Pierre-Henri Lelarge bought land in the village of Vrigny, in northern Champagne. The family sold grapes to other wineries and did not make any of its own wine. World War I devastated Champagne, where over three years of trench warfare killed many of the region's vines. But when Clémence's great-grandfather Raymond Lelarge returned from the war, he was one of the lucky ones: One hectare of his were still standing.
Raymond saw that many wineries' presses — the key equipment in Champagne production — had been destroyed, and he set to work building his own. In 1930, he bottled his first wine.
Like many winegrowers at the time, Raymond farmed organically. By the time his son took over the winery in 1950, synthetic chemicals had become de rigeur. It wasn't until the early 1990s that Clémence's parents, Dominique Lelarge and Dominique Pugeot, began reducing their herbicide and pesticide use. They achieved organic certification in 2014 and biodynamic certification in 2017.
Going fully organic 'came with a lot of decisions, like not selling grapes anymore,' said Lelarge. Her parents had previously sold half their crop to larger Champagne houses, which weren't willing to pay a premium for organic grapes. (That's changed now.) It meant that they would be growing their own wine production significantly, and so the parents sat down with their children to see if they wanted to be involved with the family business.
Lelarge was all in. First, though, she wanted to see the world. She spent six months in New York as part of a business school program, then searched for winery internships in California. She ended up working for Dominic Foppoli, the former mayor of Windsor who was accused by several women of sexual assault. The job was 'terrible,' she said, but she loved California. She later worked for the now-closed Sheldon Wines in Santa Rosa, which had 'a really cool winemaking approach,' Lelarge said.
While here, Lelarge fell in love with a Petaluma native. In 2015, after a stint back in France — her student visa had run out — she moved back, got married and settled into a country life surrounded by dairy farms.
Her parents had never exported any wine until 2012, and they weren't exporting much. But they needed to, since they were now making more. She applied for an importer's license and began developing a sales strategy. Now, Lelarge-Pugeot exports 80% of what it makes. 'I really wanted to do it myself,' she said. 'I could see the potential of how much wine we could sell here.'
A lot of wine, it turned out.
A love for Meunier
The Tradition, Lelarge-Pugeot's entry-level bottling, became one of the go-to Champagnes for by-the-glass selections because of its relative affordability. At $55 a bottle retail, it's half the price of comparable Champagnes.
'It's almost impossible to find something that's the same quality for the price of that wine,' said Lauren Feldman, co-owner of Valley, where she estimated Tradition has been available as a glass pour 90% of the time since the restaurant opened. 'We probably could find by-the-glass Champagne for a little bit cheaper than Tradition, but not farmed the way we want.'
The estate's large concentration of Pinot Meunier — a red grape that was historically considered less complex than Champagne's two flagship varieties, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay — also sets it apart. Now, thanks to producers like Lelarge-Pugeot with its Meunier-based Tradition, 'Meunier is hitting its stride,' said Josh Shapiro, partner at Flatiron Wines & Spirits in San Francisco. 'The wines highlight Meunier in a really pretty way.'
Because Meunier is Lelarge's favorite grape, she convinced her family to bottle a new cuvee, Les Meuniers de Clémence. It draws from four distinct vineyard parcels and is vintage dated, 'so that people can really see the evolution of this grape,' she said. The 2016 is reminiscent of wildflowers, quince and yellow plums. It's so rich and mouth-filling that you'd never guess there was no dosage — the sugar solution often added to Champagne to balance its searing acidity.
That richness in spite of no dosage is a common thread across the Lelarge-Pugeot lineup. The wines are moderately oxidative — not as intensely as was the fashion among grower-producers in Champagne in recent years, when 'the oxidation would really take over the character of the wine,' as Shapiro put it — and ripe. Warming temperatures, at least in the short term, have benefited the wines, Lelarge believes, and have enabled the winery to forgo sulfur additions in many of its cuvees, since the heat has diminished rot and mildew pressure.
Lelarge-Pugeot has also gained a following for its still wines, known as Coteaux Champenois. Cantwell of Bar Jabroni is one of the most prolific buyers. 'They're super delicious, and there's not a lot to compare them to,' he said. 'How often do you find Coteaux Champenois with age on it that's 100% blanc de Meunier?' The answer: rarely.
Among the most intriguing of Lelarge-Pugeot's 25 wines are its experimental Luna series. The current release, Luna Vol. 3, is a rosé, 85% Chardonnay and 15% Pinot Noir from the 2018 vintage. But it looks and tastes nothing like the prototypical rosé Champagne. Rusty-brick in color, it explodes with herbal and red-fruit flavors — sage, raspberry, pomegranate — and has a lightly bitter, tannic hit, with a frothy, moussey texture. Neither sulfur nor dosage were added. Artist Ayca Kilicoglu, whose husband owns Kitchen Istanbul restaurant in San Francisco, designed the label, which is 'chaotic but vibrant, just like how we work at the winery,' Lelarge said.
Lelarge is disappointed by the slow uptake of organic farming in Champagne. In 2018, the regional association announced an initiative to phase out herbicide use by 2025, then abandoned it. 'People think Champagne is a luxury product, so people don't really think about the way it's farmed,' Lelarge said. 'The region still has a lot of work to do in terms of farming.'
The Bay Area, in any case, is drinking it up.
'I hope people in San Francisco can appreciate that not many people get to meet Champagne makers on the regular,' said Biondivino's Drew. 'It's a beautiful blending of worlds, to have Champagne and the Bay Area come together in Clémence and in these wines.'
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