Champagne Marguet
About
While the Marguet family has been in the region for hundreds of years, the story of the domaine took a drastic turn with Benoît, who showed signs of being a firebrand at a young age. This winter, he revealed that one of his early duties in the estate was preparing the chemical sprays deemed necessary for the health of the vineyards. In a fit of teenage curiosity, he deluted the sprays to half strength, with absolutely no noticible effect on vine health. This, he told us, demonstrate how “unneccesary” and “unhelpful” so much of the conventional manipulations in the vineyard were, and gave him the desire to see how the grapes would develop without systemic intervention. By 2005, he had taken over the estate and was finally able to experiment and push the boundaries of what champagne could be. Currently, Benoît farms 10 ha of vines throughout the region, all biodynamically, a stark contrast to the hundreds of industrially farmed hectares that define champagne production, especially in the Montagne de Riems.
On each of Benoît’s labels, you’ll see little circular images, symbols with trees and expanding roots, rainbow colors, references to sacred geometry, a human figure seated in the lotus position. Marguet is a deep practitioner of biodynamic farming; he’s been certified by both Ecocert and Demeter since 2008, a move in the heart of Grand Cru territory that for years earned Benoît a fair amount of critical and sometimes unwanted attention from his contemporaries. He’s also just a spiritual sort of fellow, talking often about the harmonies between plants, people, the planets, and the soil. If you’re a committed empirical or materialist person, all of Marguet’s talk can strike as woo-woo, but it’s genuinely felt and deeply practiced. All actions in the vineyards and in the cellar are guided by not just the lunar calendar but by other planetary movements. There are amethysts around. Benoît is well-known for draft horse farming, vegetal and floral tisanes instead of chemically-derived organic treatments, spontaneous fermentations, brut-nature secondary fermentation and even a fair quantity of Champagnes bottled without any sulfur additions at all. Similarly, all of the wines produced at Champagne Marguet are aged in wood – “Have you ever slept in a stainless steel bedroom?” asks Benoît, by way of explanation. Barrels are all between 1 and 9 years old and of various sizes and cooperages –from standard 225s to custom made 1000 liters from Taransaud designed to maximize convection. Perhaps most intriguingly, Benoît makes it a point to keep the cuvée and taille of his wines together, noting that they “spent their whole life together in berry, so why not some more time in barrel.”
But the Marguet wines themselves are in no way eccentric, despite the uniqueness of the perspective and practices that lie behind them. We like Peter Liem’s remarks on the wine style overall: “Like the man himself, Marguet’s wines are outgoing, friendly and forthright, yet they conceal a depth and expression that is clearly the product of careful thought and insightful vision.” We also sense the happy, pure sensation in Marguet’s Champagnes; the style is quite different from, say, another giant in Ambonnay, Marie-Noëlle Ledru, whose wines feel aristocratic, stone-wrought, with little flourishes and frills to soften things. Marguet is just down the road, with many of the eight hectares of his family holdings neighboring some of Ledru’s parcels, and the style of the wines is fresher, more open, with fruit more readily available, and a tense, long sense of minerality hidden underneath. You could miss that part of the wines, though, the depth of terroir, if you’re not paying attention.
This fifth-generation winemaker has also organized his lineup in a way that allows you to take a deep dive either into the Marguet philosophy or into the estate’s particular holdings and terroirs: there are the delightful entry-level estate cuvées called ‘Shaman;’ the négociant cuvée ‘Yuman,’ where you can see this Pinot Noir maestro practicing with Chardonnay; village-level wines both from his own holdings in Ambonnay and Bouzy but also purchased fruit from other top-tier Champagne growers; and finally, very special lieu-dit estate bottlings that show with the most majesty and force just how effective these philosophies of farming and vinification can be. That’s before we mention the mega-cuvée Sapience, only occasionally produced in collaboration with some of Champagne’s other stars – Laval, Léclepart, etc. -- perhaps the most rare of the Marguet house, deeply unique in approach.
Along with other biodynamic pioneers in the region like Champagne Fleury or Leclerc-Briant, Benoît Marguet is among one of the most important producers to have etched these practices so deeply in the winery’s ethos. We’re proud to be able to represent this very accomplished, singular work in the Montagne de Reims.
Products
Champagne Yuman 1er Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay. A fully négociant cuvée, with fruit purchased from two terroirs, the village of Villers-Marmery (from grower-producer Sébastien Mouzon) et Villeneuve Renneville (from grower-producer Laurent Vauversin). Brut Nature and aged in oak. Base 2023 with 14% reserve. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 11ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Shaman Grand Cru
Certified Biodynamic. 92% Pinot Noir, 8% Chardonnay. Estate fruit drawn from vineyards within the terroirs of Ambonnay and Bouzy. Aged in a blend of old and new oak. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Base 2023 with 25% reserve. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 10ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Shaman Rose Grand Cru
Certified Biodynamic. 80% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Noir, including 8% Coteaux Champenois Rouge for color. Estate fruit drawn from vineyards within the terroirs of Ambonnay and Bouzy. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Base 2023 with 10% reserve. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 10ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Ambonnay Grand Cru
Certified Biodynamic. 92% Chardonnay and 8% Pinot Noir from domaine vines. Brut Nature, as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Aged in old oak foudre. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Champagne Ambonnay Freedom Grand Cru
Certified Biodynamic. 92% Chardonnay and 8% Pinot Noir from domaine vines. Brut Nature, as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Aged in old oak foudre. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur. An experimental cuvee, please ask your sales rep for full details.
Champagne Ambonnay Rose Grand Cru
Champagne Avize Grand Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay sourced from fruit grown by the grower-producer Laurent Vauversin in the terroir of Avize. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 12ppm added sulfur.
Champagne Bouzy Grand Cru
Certified Biodynamic. 100% Pinot Noir from estate vineyards all within the terroir of Bouzy. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 12 ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Chouilly Grand Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay sourced from fruit grown by the grower-producer Philippe Lancelot in the terroir of Chouilly. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 11 ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Oger Grand Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay sourced from fruit grown by the grower-producer Laurent Vauversin in the terroir of Oger. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Champagne Verzy Grand Cru
Organic. 100% Pinot Noir sourced from fruit grown by Alban Corbeaux in the terroir of Verzy. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 10ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Les Bermonts Grand Cru Lieu-Dit
Certified Biodynamic. 100% estate Chardonnay drawn entirely from the Ambonnay single-vineyard ‘Les Bermonts,’ planted via massale selection in 1952, with an area of .47ha. Soils are beige clay and limestone on a base rock of Santonien chalk at a scarce depth of just 75cm. Brut nature, and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined and unfiltered and with 16ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne Les Crayeres Grand Cru Lieu-Dit
Certified Biodynamic. 2/3 estate Pinot Noir and 1/3 Chardonnay, drawn entirely from the mid-slope Ambonnay single-vineyard ‘Les Crayères,’ planted via massale selection in both 1965 and 1974 with a surface area of 1.87 ha. The soils are clay and limestone on a base of pure, rocky Campanien chalk at just 35cm under the surface of the soil, hence the name of the vineyard. Brut nature, and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 11ppm additional sulfur.
Champagne La Grande Ruelle Grand Cru Lieu-Dit
Certified Biodynamic. 100% estate Pinot Noir drawn entirely from the Ambonnay single-vineyard ‘La Grande Ruelle,’ planted in 1967. This vineyard is located towards the bottom of the slope in the heavier topsoil. A total surface area of .49 ha gives roughly 1700 bottles in this vintage. 118m of altitude, brown limestone and clay soils, with a bedrock of fragmented chalk at 70cm of depth. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Disgorged February 2025 with 11ppm SO2 added at bottling.
Champagne Le Parc Grand Cru Lieu-Dit
Certified Biodynamic. 100% estate Chardonnay drawn entirely from the Ambonnay single-vineyard ‘Le Parc,’ planted in 1982. A surface area of 1.37ha results in 1700 bottles in this vintage. Soils are deep in this parcel, with a mix of sand and limestone giving way to a bedrock of tuffe at nearly 1.8m beneath the soil, which is deep for Champagne in general and a hallmark of parts of Ambonnay. This parcel is distinct for large deposits of tuffe as well. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Champagne Sapience 1er Cru
Organic. A Champagne composite, blending the work of Marguet with fruit from some of his favorite nearby growers, including Laval, Lahaye, Leclepart and Vauversin. 52% Pinot Meunier and 48% Pinot Noir from diverse terroirs. Sapience is Marguet’s spin on the classic big house multi-terroir blends, and is one of the few wines where he finds long lees contact to be integral to the wine’s development. This wine, Benoît reports, stems from “being aware of the divine in every part of the wine.” Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 20ppm additonal so2.
Champagne Sapience Oenotheque 1er Cru
Organic. A Champagne composite, blending the work of Marguet and other Champagne legends, Vallée de la Marne grower-producer Georges Laval in Cumières and Montaigne de Reims grower-producer David Léclapart in Trépail. 50% Chardonnay from Léclapart, 25% Pinot Meunier from Laval, 25% Pinot Noir from Marguet. Sapience is Marguet’s spin on the classic big house multi-terroir blends, and is one of the few wines where he finds long lees contact to be integral to the wine’s development. This wine, Benoît reports, stems from “being aware of the divine in every part of the wine.” ‘Oenothèque’ differs from the base ‘Sapience,’ by 4 additional years of aging. Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Coteaux Champenois Ambonnay Blanc Chardonnay
Certified Biodynamic. 100% Chardonnay from estate vineyards in Ambonnay. Direct pressed, with fermentation and 19 months’ aging in oak barriques. Unfined and unfiltered. 10ppm so2 added at bottling.
Coteaux Champenois Ambonnay Rouge Pinot Noir
Certified Biodynamic. 100% Pinot Noir from estate vineyards in the terroir of Ambonnay. Direct pressed, with fermentation and 19 months’ aging in oak barriques. Unfined and unfiltered. Bottled without additional sulfur.
Coteaux Champenois Bouzy Rouge Pinot Noir
Certified Biodynamic. 100% Pinot Noir from estate vineyards in the terroir of Bouzy. Direct pressed, with fermentation and 19 months’ aging in oak barriques. Unfined and unfiltered. Bottled without additional sulfur.
Champagne Le Mesnil Sur Oger Grand Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay sourced from grand cru vineyards in Mesnil Sur Oger grown by Sophie Launois. Brut Nature, as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Aged in old oak foudre. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Champagne Vertus 1er Cru
Organic. 100% Chardonnay sourced from premier cru vineyards in Vertus grown by Marc Augustin. Brut Nature, as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Aged in old oak foudre. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and without additional sulfur.
Coteaux Champenois Mesnil Sur Oger Blanc
Organic. 100% Chardonnay grown by Sophie Launois and Pertois Lebrun in Mesnil Sur Oger. Direct pressed, with fermentation and 19 months’ aging in oak barriques. Unfined and unfiltered. 10ppm so2 added at bottling.
Coteaux Champenois Oger Blanc
Organic. 100% Chardonnay grown by Laurent Vauversin in Oger. Direct pressed, with fermentation and 19 months’ aging in oak barriques. Unfined and unfiltered. 10ppm so2 added at bottling.
Champagne Sapience Rose
Organic. A Champagne composite, blending the work of Marguet with fruit from some of his favorite nearby growers, including Laval, Lahaye, Leclepart and Vauversin. 95% Chardonnay and 5% Pinot Meunier from diverse terroirs. aSpience is Marguet’s spin on the classic big house multi-terroir blends, and is one of the few wines where he finds long lees contact to be integral to the wine’s development. This wine, Benoît reports, stems from “being aware of the divine in every part of the wine.” Brut Nature and aged in oak as are all wines at the Marguet domaine. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and with 20ppm additonal so2.
