Earlier this week, the K&L Champagne team kicked off our annual staff summit with a dinner hosted by Billecart-Salmon. It has become a welcome tradition to start off our yearly survey of all the grande marque producers with a sushi dinner at my place featuring the wines of this great house. Christian Esser, who just returned from a visit to Billecart, and Eric Lecours presented the wines and treated Scott Beckerley, Michael Benoit, Philip Roufail, Will Langhi, Cinnamon and me to a great spread from Kanpai sushi in Palo Alto.

They brought nearly the entire range—eight different cuvées—and every one of them showed incredibly well. We started the festivities off with the Billecart-Salmon "Brut Réserve" Champagne $59.99 which now features 2019 as its youngest vintage. I say “features 2019” because the wine is a stunning 62% reserves that go back as far as 2006, a showcase for their commitment to the use of older wines that is so unique among the famous names of Champagne. This wine had the texture and poise that one would expect from this generous use of older stock, but the main feature here was an electric energy—a crispness and an elegance that make this one of the great starting points in the world of bubbles. The current batch is dosed at a super low 3 grams per liter and is composed of slightly more Pinot Noir than in the past.

When we sat down to eat sushi, Eric poured us the Billecart-Salmon Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Brut Champagne $94.99, which was magical with the food, especially the Maguro and Hamachi. While the Réserve gets its texture and complexity from old wines in the blend, this wine is kept longer on the lees and is currently based on 2016, with 32% reserves from 2015 and 2014. It is composed exclusively of Grand Cru Chardonnay from Avize, Cramant, Chouilly, and Mesnil and, while dosed slightly higher than the reserve at 3.9 grams per liter, shows much drier than it because of the scintillating brightness these vineyards endow on the wine. The wine was clean, chalky and vivant—perhaps the glass I drank the fastest of the whole evening!

Up next was the Billecart-Salmon "Sous Bois" Brut Champagne $94.99, the only entirely barrel-fermented Champagne of the evening. If you haven’t tasted this wine lately, and you like the house style of Billecart, I would encourage you to treat yourself soon. Composed of one-third each Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Meunier fermented and kept in wood for six months, this wine has turned into a real star in the lineup. It has more mid-palate presence and power than the rest of the lineup, but still retains the elegant DNA of the house with a fresh, clean finish. I loved this one with the spicy tuna rolls.

Alongside the Sous Bois, we tasted the 2013 Billecart-Salmon Vintage Champagne $99.99, from the only October harvest of my 23-year career working with Champagne. This wine has grown up and come together since the last time I tasted it, and I wrote in my notebook that it has one of the best textures of any wine I have ever had from this vintage. It is composed of 62% Pinot Noir, 24% Chardonnay, and 14% Meunier—85% coming from Grand Cru sites. Even though this wine was all stainless, the extended lees aging gave it a silkiness in the mouth that was hard to beat. I found an almost Nutella-like element in this that reminded me of Verzenay wines, but the back end was all about the minerality and refreshment. Like the Brut Réserve, the wine is dosed at 3 grams per liter, but they decided to label this cuvée as Extra Brut while leaving the Réserve labeled Brut. After all, who knows if a future batch of the Réserve might need 6.1 grams!

The house of Billecart is extremely patient and is only now about to release their 2009 Billecart-Salmon “Cuvée Louis Salmon” Blanc de Blancs. This warm, clean harvest made mostly softer wines, but, by selecting the freshest parcels exclusively from Mesnil, Cramant, and Chouilly and then executing a very cold fermentation entirely in stainless steel, they made a 2009 for the ages. We hope to get this wine very soon, but, after they waited 144 months before disgorging this cuvée, we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks! The wine still has a flash of green inside the white gold color, and is subtly kissed with fresh baguette and clean white fruit aromas. In the mouth it is creamy, as one would expect after such epic aging on the lees and finishes as chalky and clean as one could want. It too was magical with the raw fish. Closing my eyes, I can still taste it!

Billecart was the last major house to release their epic 2008 tête de cuvée, and I have said before in these pages, it was worth the wait. Tasting it again after six months more rest, the 2008 Billecart-Salmon "Cuvée Nicolas François Billecart" NFB Brut Champagne $229.99 is now showing even better than when first released. I don’t think any Champagne lover will ever say “I bought to many 2008s,” as many of these wines promise to outlive me, and I believe that this, along with the Krug and maybe three or four others, will be battling for the title of the best of the 2008s. This wine was 17% barrel fermented, and composed of 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay, dosed 2.9 grams per liter. It is still a bright white gold after 15 years and has that magical balance between ethereal lightness and powerful gravitas that the best of this great year have. The finish is near infinite here.

For our last flight, we compared the Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne $94.99 to what might be the release of the year, the 2010 Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne $119.99. The nonvintage was singing, and like the Brut Réserve, the youngest wine was from 2019 for the current batch. This rosé is elegance in a bottle, with subtle strawberry fruit and a refined, dry balance brought by a majority of Chardonnay. A tonic for a jaded palate. The 2010 raised the stakes—it is in fact declassified Cuvée Elisabeth—and has been treated to 130 months on the lees. It too is a majority of Chardonnay, 55% to 45% Pinot, and has an airy, laid-back personality up front. But the back end is kaleidoscopic, with the minerality of a top vintage Blanc de Blancs and the elusive cherry savor of a Vosne from the 85-year-old Pinot vineyard that gives the wine its color. What a bottle!

Thank you Eric, Christian and Champagne Billecart-Salmon for an unforgettable evening!

A toast to you!

- Gary Westby, Champagne Buyer