How does Antoine Roland-Billecart define the house style? “Freshness, elegance, fruit style and wine style. We always want to remind you that Champagne is a wine. Prior to Champagne, we produce a wine.” He notes that viticulture is quite distinctive at the 46th parallel, about as far north as wine cultivars will ripen. “We really have to take care of the fruit. We’re not alcohol chasing for maturity, we’re more into freshness.”
Billecart Salmon obtains their wine grapes from 14 hectares of House-owned vines and grower vines from 40 crus across Champagne (mostly around Epernay.) The Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier grapes come from the expressive Grand Cru terroir of Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne and the Côte des Blancs. Billecart Salmon practices some biodynamic principles in the vineyard, avoiding pesticides and herbicides. Yields are kept low to improve the grape quality, and harvest tends to be earlier. The House’s philosophy is that early harvest yields a more delicate and elegant Champagne. Total production is capped at 2.5 million bottles annually.
Now, the crown of Billecart Salmon’s vineyard real estate is the single parcel Le Clos Saint Hilaire. This vineyard is planted exclusively with Pinot Noir vines. The one-hectare of Pinot Noir vines is enclosed within a stone wall and is ploughed by horses. The fruit is used to make the vintage Clos Saint-Hilaire Champagne, which is limited to 3,500-5,500 individually numbered bottles per year.
Billecart Salmon employs a unique winemaking method involving cold settling and cold fermentation taking inspiration from breweries. This takes place over three weeks to a month – much longer than other producers, and a first among Champagne makers. In the 1950s, Billecart Salmon established a cold settling technique using stainless steel tanks where the pressed juice undergoes a primary cold settling for about 12 hours to allow the heaviest must solids to sink to the bottom. The must is then racked into clean tanks and chilled for another 48 hours. The second settling is colder (down to 2ºC), eliminating wild yeasts and other heavy elements without using enzymes, filtering or a centrifuge. The must then undergoes a cold, slow fermentation (just under 13ºC) of about 30 days in oak casks or steel tanks. Billecart Salmon has more than 400 small and 24 large oak casks for vinification. Each parcel is vinified individually by cru and by grape variety to allow traceability. The low fermentation temperature helps preserve subtle fruit aromas and the great finesse that these Champagnes are known for.
The wines are bottle-aged in 17th-century underground chalk cellars for nearly a decade before release. Another interesting aspect of winemaking is the very low dosage used after disgorgement – under 6g/l, equivalent to Extra Brut dosages.
At a three-day tasting in Stockholm in the spring of 1999, several Champagne authorities such as Richard Juhlin, Serena Sutcliffe and Robert Joseph set about to identify the “Champagne of the Millennium.” Among the wines that were judged were superlative cuvées from such esteemed houses as Dom Pérignon, Krug, Taittinger, Pol Roger and Louis Roederer. The results of the tasting had the 1959 singled out as the “Champagne of the Millennium”, while the 1961 finished second. Needless to say, Roland-Billecart was glad he reconsidered!
