A restock and new cuvée from Vincent Bernard, introducing Julien and Karine Prelat, and a new vintage release from Legrand-Latour.

6/5/26 - 

It is days like today when all the stars just fall into place, and I mean that literally as the following Champenois are Stars in my view. I am really excited to have so many incredible Champagnes available today. See below for additional information on Vincent Bernard, Julien and Karine Prelat, and Legrand-Latour.

We are starting today off strong with a restock of the inaugural vintage of Champagne Vincent Bernard as well as a new cuvee from him: Assemblage!
Marie-Noëlle Ledru created an incredible legacy in Champagne, known for making soulful, powerful wines. Even before retiring, her wines were unicorns, a truly special experience to find any bottles! For those who have been wondering what happened with the vineyards of Marie-Noëlle Ledru look no further. Vincent is the Grandson of Andre Beaufort and for 9 generations his family has owned and cultivated vines. He learned through a friend of his daughter that Marie-Noëlle wanted to lease her vineyards and so Vincent went to visit her. They agreed on how to farm, believing that naturally farming beautiful grapes leads to making great Champagnes. Vincent had no where to make wine so Marie-Noëlle decided to allow him to lease 0.4749 hectares of vines in the La Jument vineyard and offered to guide and advise him on all aspects of winemaking at her estate.

"So, I adopted her method of making Champagne. Marie-Noëlle likes simple things, and so do I: beautiful grapes to make good Champagne without artifice, but with a lot of monitoring and attention throughout the various processes. I want to emphasize how proud I am that Marie-Noëlle passed on her expertise to me, which I will, in turn, be able to pass on to my children. A wonderful legacy!"

We were lucky enough to get a taste of Vincent's first vintage and they were truly the start (or continuation) of something very special. They had this incredible balance of power and elegance, with amazing depth. They are the type of Champagnes that make you stop and think. We are incredibly excited to have a restock of the 2020 vintage as well as his Assemblage, a blend of 48% 2020 Pinot Noir, 30% 2021 Pinot Noir, and  16% 2020 Chardonnay. The grapes are coming from a blend of plots in Crayère, Aigremonts, and la Jument. The wine was bottled in May 2022 and aged sur lattes for 41 months before being disgorged with 4g/L dosage. 

Julien and Karine Prelat (Photo: Hannah Williams)

New today to the shelves of CSW are the Champagnes of Julien Prelat as well as a Coteaux Champenois from his wife Karine Prelat. Julian is the third generation of his family to tend vines in Celles sur Ource and much like his friend and neighbor Cedric Bouchard, he makes fantastic Champagnes of single vineyard, varietal, and vintage. Julien farms 7 hectares across the Aube on mainly Kimmeridgian soils, everything is farmed with organic fertilizers and done by hand using small plows. In the cellar the wines are vinified in stainless steel tanks before aging in Burgundy barrels on the lees. The vin clair are tasted until they are deemed ready to be bottled and aged sur lattes for 18 months. The dosage is always determined by a blind tasting until the wine pops, Julien does not care what the number is, but about the balance, feeling and taste of the final wine. We have two of his wines today, Presle and Chantemerle, these are an amazing introduction to the elegant, pure style of Champagnes from Prelat. His wife Karine helps throughout the whole farming and winemaking process while also making a few Coteaux Champenois of her own from inherited land in Ricey. Today we have the incredibly unique 3 Cepages Coteaux Champenois Blanc that is a blend of 1/3 each Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, and Petit Meslier planted in 1987 on portlandian soils. Fermented and aged for 10 months in 225L concrete eggs. The wine has incredible notes of honeysuckle and pear with a warm, sunny feeling alongside amazing acidity. This is a unique wine but simply delicious! On top of the fantastic work going on in the vineyard and cellars here, the wines are stunning and shoot well above their price point. 

I stumbled upon a bottle of Legrand-Latour Eocene in a shop in Reims after an employee from Laherte Freres said this was one of his current favorite Champagnes. My husband and I drank it over the span of a day in and out of our hotel, and were blown away by it's incredibly mineral and savory style! The type of wine you just wanted to keep coming back to. With their second release now in the U.S. we are excited to continue exploring this thought-provoking domaine!

Legrand-Latour is a very geologically focused estate that in 2004 began digging to search for fossilized shells. They ended up doing an excavation of a mile long, 300 meter deep hand carved cave to help document and preserve sea creatures from 45 million years ago, which is now open as a museum. From a winemaking standpoint the family had always sold to the co-op until their son returned to the vineyards, and began changing the conventional farming practices to organic, and after 5 years in 2017 he decided to quit the co-op and bottle his own wines. The names of each wine come from the different geological strata since he believes that geology plays the biggest role in determining the wines identity. Today we have three different cuvees to offer from them, Eocene, Ypresien, and Lutetien.

-Hanna Krilov Cohen

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