It is one of our favourite Champagnes, and almost the only line we’ve had in stock continuously since Uncorked opened back in 1994. Nico Billecart even did an internship with us. 200 years and seven generations after it was founded, Billecart-Salmon is one of the few major Champagne houses to remain family-owned, and their commitment to quality has been a constant over the years.

The house was founded in 1818, at the marriage of Nicolas-Francois Billecart and Elisabeth Salmon (whose names live on in the respective blanc and rose prestige cuvees). It weathered phylloxera, the Great Depression, and having its cellar stocks largely shipped off to Germany during the Second World War. The modern era has seen the careful acquisition of more grand cry vineyards. Nowadays, the house has 100 hectares of its own vineyards, manages another 120, and buys grapes by contract from families in another 100 hectares. That makes it small by the standards of the (former) Grande Marque houses.

The Brut Reserve depends on an unusually high proportion of reserve wines, for a non-vintage cuvee of complexity and elegance. Billecart had made a rose cuvee by the saignee method (fermenting free-run juice from red grapes) since the 1840s, but in the 1970s Jean-Roland Billecart turned things around and created a more vinous style of rose, by adding a small amount of red wine to the white wine base. It was a big success, and the Billecart rose has thereafter been their calling card. The Sous Bois (‘under wood’) cuvee has been vinified and aged in oak casks in a nod to the Champagnes of yesteryear. There is an excellent NV Blanc des Blancs, while the vintage and the much-loved Nicolas-Francois vintage cuvee are both Pinot-dominant. The Cuvee Louis vintage Blanc des Blancs is named after Elisabeth Salmon’s brother, while the Elisabeth Salmon is Billecart’s vintage rose prestige cuvee. The rarest bird of all in the Billecart aviary is the Clos Saint-Hilaire. It is named after the patron saint of the church in Billecart’s home town of Mareuil-sur-Ay, and is a single vineyard Champagne which comes from an enclosed 1-hectare vineyard in the village. (NT 19/06/25)