Champagne Billecart-Salmon, "Cuvee 200", wooden box, 1.5 L
Tasting Notes
Champagne sparkling pale golden color with small bubbles.
The wine has a complex, balanced and elegant taste with a rich creamy texture and a very long finish.
Elegant fragrant bouquet of wine has notes of fruit - apples, peaches and citrus, hints of spices, fresh pastries and hazelnuts.
Champagne is ideal as an aperitif, goes well with fish and meat specialties, caviar, lobster, rich seafood, white truffles, bird.
Interesting Facts
Unique, aristocratic cuvee "Clos Saint-Hilaire" is named after the patron saint of Mareuil-sur-Ay. Plot Saint-Hilaire is just one hectare and meets the highest standards of viticulture and winemaking, from the moment of its creation - since 1964. Thanks to the magic terroir with chalk and limestone and rich experience of winemakers, from the harvest to the Clos Saint-Hilaire are exceptional wines that have better performance.
Champagne "Clos Saint-Hilaire" created exclusively from Pinot Noir and is classified as Blanc de Noirs. Vinification is done in oak barrels in which the wine during endurance develops exceptional purity of taste and becomes a unique complexity of its flavor, which combines an amazing freshness and elegance that can grow to perfection in the next twenty years. This champagne is produced in limited quantities, the number of bottles that ranges from 3,500 to 7,500 copies.
Bilkar family lived in Mareuil-sur-Ay from the XVI century. When Nicolas Francois Bilkar married Elizabeth Salmon in the early 1800s, ancient vineyards of both families were united. This has led to the decision to leave Nicolas his law practice and engage in winemaking in the family estate. In 1818 he founded the Champagne house Bilkar-Salmon, which today is the oldest continuously operating family home in Champagne. Currently, he manages the seventh generation - brothers Francois and Antoine Roland Bilkar. Basements are under the control of the famous "chef de cave" François Domi.
Home Bilkar-Salmon belong to a total of 15 hectares of vineyards. Eleven of them are in the Vallée de la Marne - 4 hectares of Grand Cru in Au and Premiers Crus in Mareuil-sur-Ay, 7 hectares in the village of Damery. In Côte de Blancs family owns 4 hectares of vineyards Grand Cru Class villages Chouilly, Avize and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. In addition, the house rents another 50 hectares of vineyards in Champagne and buys fruit from other farms.
As for the harvest, one of the distinctive aspects of the House of Billecart-Salmon is the belief that early harvest allows you to create a more elegant and subtle champagne, and as a preservative should not serve alcohol, and strong natural acidity. Another distinctive feature of the House Bilkar-Salmon is their practice of double wort cooling process for the removal of sediment, they began to use in 1952. This technology includes the primary cooling grape juice for 12 hours. The juice is then moved to clean the tanks for the second - colder - purifying, where it is cooled 48 hours at 2 ° C. After this long slow fermentation is initiated with the addition of dry yeast for 5 weeks to preserve as much fine fruit flavors. Of particular benefit from this process gets Pinot Meunier, which Bilkar-Salmon considers a vital component in the champagne world-class, while many manufacturers shy away from Pinot Meunier, because it is easy to destroy the delicate flavors in the fermentation process. Further conducted malolactic fermentation, except for some years, when according to the characteristics of the vintage, it is not used.
Champagne Houses Bilkar-Salmon can be considered a benchmark in its class. Besides tasting delicious characteristics, they have another important feature - the ability to long-term storage. In 1999 cuvee "Nicolas-Francois Billecart" vintage 1959 won the contest "Champagne Millennium" ("Champagne of the Millennium"), ahead of the 150 best champagnes XX century!
