The Engineer, the Tribe & the Ratchet Press
Grain par Grain — "grain by grain" — is the Bugey natural wine project of Caroline Ledédenté, whose path to the vines reads like a tour of France's living-wine heartland. Trained first as an engineer in architecture, she changed her life: restaurants, then wine, then Paris — where she became a veteran of the natural wine scene, helming the lists at Clown Bar and Sauvage. The conversion moment came when a sommelier told her natural wines "all taste the same" — she went to find out for herself, and at the Vinisat fair had a moment with a bottle from Pat Desplats. She never looked back. She studied viticulture and oenology in the Jura (BTS at Montmorot), worked with several producers — including Alice Bouvot at Domaine de l'Octavin, where she learned to work with what nature gives — and then continued with Grégoire Perron in Bugey, where she found her inspiration. In 2018 she settled in Artemare, in the wild, dramatic southern Bugey between Jura and Savoie — "these whites, their acidities," she says, "I melted for Bugey." From a single Chardonnay parcel at the start, she now farms 4 hectares of small, isolated, biodiverse plots — fruit trees among the vines — completed by organic grape purchases in Savoie. The cellar creed is absolute: "Zero sulfites in the cellar. Zero sulfite at bottling. This is my bias." Healthy grapes, hand-harvested in 15kg boxes, pressed on a wooden ratchet press operated by hand; settling and racking are the only actions; fermentations are spontaneous. The result: wines of incredible purity — fine, elegant, precise — that have made Caroline, rightly, one of the most coveted women in natural winemaking, cult-status in Paris and Tokyo.
Clown Bar, the Desplats Moment & the Road to Bugey
Caroline Ledédenté changed her life — more than once. The first career was engineering, in architecture: precision, structure, plans. Then came the restaurants, then wine, and then Paris, where she became a sommelier at the sharp end of the natural wine revolution — running the wine lists at Clown Bar, the jewel-box bistro next to the Cirque d'Hiver, and Sauvage, two addresses that defined what Paris drank in the 2010s. It was in Paris that she fell for natural wine — and it was a challenge that sealed it. When a sommelier told her natural wines "all taste the same," she decided to find out for herself. At the Vinisat wine fair, she had her moment with a bottle from Pat Desplats — the Loire natural wine sage — and, as the merchants who know her tell it, she never looked back.
Wanting to get her hands into production, she enrolled at the wine school in the Jura — the BTS viti-oeno in Montmorot — and settled in the region right after, in 2018. The apprenticeship was a roll call of the movement's best cellars: several Jura producers, and notably Alice Bouvot at Domaine de l'Octavin, the academy that also formed Karnage's Charles Dagand and Barbatruks' Maxim Lannay. There Caroline learned the essential skills: how to make natural wine, and how to work with what nature gives you rather than against it. Then came the decisive internship — with Grégoire Perron in Bugey — and with it, the revelation of the region itself.
Bugey ended up being the place she fell in love with. The wild, cliff-edged valleys of the southern Bugey, around Artemare in the Ain, offered everything the Jura had taught her to want — whites of thrilling acidity, an outpouring of grape varieties between Jura and Savoie — with land still within reach of a young first-generation winemaker. The beginning was modest: one parcel of Chardonnay, everything else négoce. But the vision was already whole. She would hunt out small, isolated parcels of native varieties with good biodiversity; she would work everything by hand; and she would add nothing. Grain par Grain — grain by grain, berry by berry — the name says exactly how she works.
"I settled in 2018 just after my BTS viti-oeno. Passionate about natural wine in Paris, I melted for Bugey — these whites, their acidities. Between Jura and Savoie I am spoiled by the outpouring of grape varieties."
— Caroline Ledédenté, Grain par Grain
Artemare, the Grand Colombier & the Isolated-Parcel Hand
Bugey is France's great in-between: a small, ancient wine region in the Ain département, wedged between the Jura and Savoie, where the southern Jura's last rampart — the Grand Colombier — rises above the Rhône. The landscape is wild and dramatic: cliff-edged valleys, forest, scattered orchards, and tiny vineyards clinging to coteaux of clay and limestone. It is a region of crisp mountain whites — Jacquère, Altesse, Aligoté — and of reds from Mondeuse and Gamay, with a treasure of near-forgotten local varieties like Molette. Driving toward Artemare, where the small winery sits, you find yourself in one of the most beautiful and dramatic landscapes in French wine.
Caroline's 4 hectares are a deliberate patchwork of small, isolated parcels of native varieties with good biodiversity — fruit trees planted among the vines. In Leyzieu, near Belley, the parcels Tomacette and Aux Cries face the Grand Colombier itself: Gamay, Aligoté, Jacquère and Chasselas planted in 1985 and 1990 on clay-limestone. In Corbonod, at the frontier with Savoie, a beautiful 0.9-hectare coteau of Altesse and Molette, planted 1998–99, faces the Rhône, ringed by houses with fruit trees and gardens. In Musin, a tiny 0.26-hectare plot holds Mondeuse and Chardonnay from 1990. And in Gevrin, her first parcel — La Côte, planted 1985 — faces north at 450 metres, so remote that, as Caroline laughs, "the animals love to pick the grapes before me."
The farming is as honest as her cellar creed. She protects the vines mainly from powdery and downy mildew with Bordeaux mixture and sulfur — the traditional organic minimum — and does everything else by hand. Harvest is manual, the grapes carried back in 15kg fruit boxes so the berries arrive whole and unbruised: healthy grapes, the non-negotiable foundation of zero-sulfur winemaking. The négoce side, buying organically farmed grapes in Savoie, completes the range and honours the region's double heritage — between Jura and Savoie, as Caroline says, she is spoiled for choice.
Bugey is the overlooked third point of the Jura–Savoie triangle: an ancient region of mountain whites and light alpine reds, where Jacquère, Altesse, Aligoté, Chasselas and Molette meet Mondeuse and Gamay on clay-limestone coteaux. The Grand Colombier — the southern extremity of the Jura — watches over the best parcels. For a sommelier trained on Jura precision and in love with acidity, Bugey offered the same thrills with wilder landscapes and rarer varieties. Caroline "melted" for it; the wines show why.
The heartland parcels: at Leyzieu near Belley, the Tomacette and Aux Cries plots face the Grand Colombier across clay-limestone ground, their Gamay, Aligoté, Jacquère and Chasselas planted in 1985 and 1990. A mixture of fruit trees sits among the vines — the biodiversity Caroline actively seeks when choosing land. This is the source of Le Vin de la Tribu (Jacquère and Aligoté from Tomacette) and the backbone of the estate: old, healthy, mixed plantings in a postcard of alpine France.
At Corbonod, on the frontier with Savoie, a 0.9-hectare coteau of Altesse and Molette (planted 1998–99) faces the Rhône, surrounded by gardens and fruit trees — one of those parcels that explains the word "bucolic." Nearby Musin is smaller still: 0.26 hectare of Mondeuse and Chardonnay from 1990. These tiny, isolated, biodiverse plots are exactly what Caroline hunts: native varieties in living landscapes, too small and awkward for anyone else's business plan — and perfect for hers.
Caroline's first parcel tells you everything about her appetite for the remote: La Côte, in the commune of Gevrin, planted in 1985, facing north at 450 metres altitude, far from everything. "The animals love to pick the grapes before me," she says — a shrug and a smile that amount to a farming philosophy. The north-facing, high-altitude site gives fruit of piercing freshness: the acidities she crossed France to find. If a few clusters go to the wildlife, that is simply the rent for farming inside nature rather than against it.
Zero Sulfites, the Wooden Ratchet & the Only-Actions Hand
Caroline states her cellar creed in four short sentences, and there is nothing to add: "Zero sulfites in the cellar. Zero sulfite at bottling. This is my bias." Not a low dose, not a safety addition at bottling — nothing, ever, from crush to cork. It is the strictest position in natural wine, held not as a marketing line but as a working bias, and it places absolute demands on everything upstream: the farming, the harvest, the hygiene, the fruit.
The cellar toolkit is correspondingly minimal. Healthy grapes arrive hand-harvested in 15kg boxes. Whites are crushed by hand and pressed on a wooden ratchet press operated by hand — the same slow, gentle technology her mentors used; reds macerate briefly (ten days for the Gamay) before the same vertical press. Then the cellar's entire intervention list is exhausted: settling, racking. Fermentations are spontaneous, supported only by light pump-overs at the start. Ageing happens in fiberglass vats — typically nine months — neutral vessels that add nothing and hide nothing. No fining, no filtration, no additions of any kind.
The engineer's training shows in the precision of the result: wines of incredible purity, fine and elegant, each one a small jewel — rare, precise, captivating. The curiosity shows in the breadth: a myriad of cuvées, often in tiny quantities (some merchants receive allocations of just 24 bottles), each one exploring a parcel, a variety, a maceration. And the sommelier's past shows in the drinkability: vibrant, pure-fruited wines with real clarity and focus, built for the table she used to serve. Grain by grain, parcel by parcel — a myriad of cuvées in tiny quantities, each with the energy of the woman who made it.
The Zero Bias & the 15-Kilo Box
The guiding principle of Grain par Grain is that purity is built, not bought. Zero sulfites is a bias that must be earned at every step: isolated, biodiverse parcels; fruit trees among the vines; hand harvest in 15-kilo boxes so no berry is crushed before its time; a wooden ratchet press worked by hand; spontaneous fermentations with the lightest pump-overs; fiberglass élevage that adds nothing; settling and racking as the only cellar actions. What emerges is the engineering of nothing: wines of crystalline purity — Jacquère and Aligoté whites of alpine cut, Gamay and Mondeuse reds of vivid fruit — each cuvée small, precise, and alive. The ex-sommelier knows what a table wants; the ex-engineer knows how to build it; the vigneronne knows it starts, grain by grain, in the vineyard.
En Pleine Nature, Le Vin de la Tribu & the Jewel Hand
The Grain par Grain range is a constellation of small cuvées — Bugey whites of alpine acidity, light reds of pure fruit, each made in tiny quantities and all with zero sulfites from vine to bottle. Allocations are minuscule; some merchants limit sales to a few bottles per customer.
The Changed Life, the Coveted Wines & the Grain-by-Grain Hand
Grain par Grain is not merely a domaine; it is the proof that a great palate can become a great vineyard — the story of an engineer who rebuilt herself as a Paris sommelier, was provoked by a dismissal ("they all taste the same") into a life's pursuit, and followed the thread from a Pat Desplats bottle at a wine fair to the wildest valleys of the Bugey. In an era when natural wine's first generation has become its establishment, Caroline Ledédenté represents the second: formed by the best — Clown Bar and Sauvage in Paris, Alice Bouvot in the Jura, Grégoire Perron in Bugey — and already, within a few vintages, among the most coveted names in the movement, with allocations measured in bottles rather than cases. The merchants who watched her from the first vintage saw it immediately: the clarity, the focus, the pure fruit, and — like Caroline herself — a lot of energy.
The legacy of Grain par Grain is the legacy of the small and the precise. Caroline is not building an empire: she is building a patchwork — 4 hectares of isolated, biodiverse parcels hunted out one by one, fruit trees among the vines, a 0.26-hectare plot here, a remote north-facing coteau at 450 metres there, where the animals pick before she does. She does not chase volume — some cuvées exist in a few dozen cases. She does not chase consensus — zero sulfites is a bias, not a trend. She makes a myriad of tiny, jewel-like cuvées — En Pleine Nature, Le Vin de la Tribu, the Altesse of Corbonod, the Mondeuse of Musin — each one grain by grain, hand by hand, nothing added, ever. The image the importers love says it all: a sophisticated ex-Parisian somm, whipping her four-wheeler through the rugged, cliff-edged valleys of Bugey.
The future of the project is tied to the future of Bugey itself — a region whose old, mixed, biodiverse parcels are exactly the raw material natural wine dreams of, and which Caroline has helped put on the maps of Paris and Tokyo. As new parcels join the patchwork, as the tribe of friends returns each harvest, and as each vintage's tiny cuvées find their way to the few dozen merchants lucky enough to have an allocation, Caroline Ledédenté remains what she set out to be: a winemaker who trusted the palate, the parcel, and the berry — who proved that the finest wines are built the way the best buildings are: with structure, patience, and respect for the site. The life was changed. The grains keep adding up.
"Zero sulfites in the cellar. Zero sulfite at bottling. This is my bias."
— Caroline Ledédenté, Grain par Grain