The Top Champagne Release of 2024?
I don’t know if I am ready for a better Champagne to be released in 2024 than the 2012 Billecart-Salmon "Cuvée Louis" Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne $199.99. I have been lucky enough to have tasted it three times since its release this April, and to drink it once at home as well. This is a Champagne that epitomizes the elegance of this great house, and of Grand Cru Chardonnay from the region. It’s a fitting follow up to the great 2008 and the ripe and rich 2009. This wine has a super bright color, still sporting a flash of green after 12 years. The bouquet is full of the finest brioche notes, and, in the mouth, it is creamy perfection, layered in with Meyer lemon zip and profound chalky minerality. The finish expands in the mouth like the spreading tail of a peacock and goes on and on. It has endless facets and tremendous complexity for those with the patience to taste it quietly but is also a little too easy to drink. As Florent said to me, “Wine is meant for drinking, not just for thinking.” After bringing it home to have with sashimi, I couldn’t agree more! I will be surprised if I see a better release this year, and although expensive, I can’t recommend it highly enough at this price point. One cannot find a better bottle of Champagne.
It is named after Louis Salmon, one of the founders of this great house, and also its first chef de cave. In the picture below, you can see his portrait, along with the seventh generation of the family, Mathieu Rolland-Billecart, and the current chef de cave of the house, Florent Nys. Having an opportunity to taste with both of them was amazing and it helped me understand why this wine is so incredibly good.
Made exclusively from Chardonnay, it is 60% Mesnil, 23% Cramant, and 17% a combination of Chouilly and Oiry. While Oiry might be the least well known of the Grand Crus of the Côte des Blancs, Florent says it raises both the level of floral notes on the nose and chalkiness on the finish of this wine—which I will say has no shortage of either! The low yields of the 2012 harvest—which started out with problems and finished with a magical autumn—made for very concentrated fruit with both ripeness and great acidity.
One quarter of the wine was fermented in oak barrels, and 5% of the lots did not go through malolactic—as usual here at Billecart it was treated to one of the coldest, slowest primary fermentations in the whole region to preserve the maximum freshness in the wine. It was almost 70 years ago now that they pioneered nearly lager-like temperatures for the work of the first fermentation. The wine was bottled in May of 2013, and given 10 years on the lees before being disgorged on at 4.5 grams per liter of sugar—technically Extra Brut—but after this amount of aging, it is dry, but not at all austere.
We also have a tiny allocations of the magnums 2012 Billecart-Salmon "Cuvée Louis" Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne Magnum 1.5L $449.99 for those who wish to keep the wine for even longer!
A toast to you!