Billecart-Salmon launches new Champagne to mark 200 years
Family-owned Champagne house Billecart-Salmon has launched a new, multi-vintage Champagne to celebrate 200 years since its establishment in 1818. Read Tina Gellie's report, with a tasting note on the new wine available exclusively to Premium members.
From eight grands crus in the Côte des Blancs and Montagne de Reims, Billecart-Salmon’s new cuvée is a blend of exceptional wines from the 2000, 2003, 2008 and 2012 vintages comprising 92% Pinot Noir and 4% each of Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier.
Premium members: Scroll down to see the tasting note
In a nod to the year 1818, when the Mareuil-sur-Aÿ house was founded, just 1,818 magnums and 18 jeroboams of the new Champagne blend have been made.
The UK allocation has been released to the market in the last week and London merchant Hedonism was expected to sell magnums for £1,500 each.
Mathieu Roland-Billecart, who has just taken over the house as the seventh generation, said the aim of the wine was to ‘capture the essence’ of Billecart-Salmon.
‘This is a multi-vintage blend, not a non-vintage wine, but it has the stamp of the house,’ he said.
The decision to make it Pinot Noir dominant helps the wine to reflect the ‘old rose’ fragrance that was typical of the house’s famous Clos St-Hilaire single-vineyard Champagne, as well as the founders’ cuvées Nicolas François and Elisabeth, said new chef de cave Florent Nys.
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Also to mark the bicentenary, Billecart-Salmon’s prestige blanc de blancs has been renamed Cuvée Louis in honour of co-founder Elisabeth Salmon’s winemaker brother.
These wines took centre stage at a dinner at La Dame de Pic at London’s Four Season’s Hotel on 24 May, where chef-patron Anne-Sophie Pic and fellow Michelin three-starred chef Alain Passard of L’Arpège in Paris each presented three dishes to match the wines.
London was the last in a ‘gastronomic world tour’ to celebrate Billecart-Salmon’s 200th anniversary, with Passard also partnering with Michelin-starred chefs in Singapore, Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles to create bespoke menus.
Tina Gellie’s Billecart-Salmon tasting notes:
See also:
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Tina Gellie has worked for Decanter since 2008 across a number of editorial roles and is currently the brand's Content Director. An awarded wine writer and editor, she won several scholarships on the way to getting her WSET Diploma, and is a freeman of The Worshipful Company of Distillers. She has worked in wine publishing since 2003, including as Deputy Editor and Acting Editor of Wine International. Before her wine career she was a newspaper journalist for broadsheets in London and Australia.