“98! 91! 84!” shout five of us towards a man called Mathieu as we sit together around a table dressed with a pressed white tablecloth, lots of gold-banded porcelain, and even more wine glasses. I know what you’re thinking: they don’t make bingo halls like they used to. Alas, we haven’t taken a Eurostar followed by a two-hour taxi to score a full house but rather to gain a grounding in champagne at Billecart-Salmon’s estate in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. The number yelling is the between-course dinner entertainment – specifically a nail-bitingly tense round of ‘Guess the age of the bottle’, led by Billecart-Salmon’s head honcho – Mathieu Roland-Billecart.
“I love you enough not to serve you ‘84,” Mathieu rolls his eyes, hands still tightly wrapped around the bottle. Unable to ask the audience or phone a friend, I’m stuck with only two pearls of wisdom. One: it can’t be from ‘84 – a dire year for Champagne’s vines, plagued by heavy rains and brutal frost. Two: it’s no young buck, seeing as the bottle is made from green glass that’s no longer recycled in France. Several more agonising minutes of heckling persist before Mathieu caves and splays his fingers to reveal a dated label.
Bottles collect dust in the cellars
Lief Carlsson
“1976,” he reads. The room gasps. This makes this bottle of Cuvée Nicolas Francois almost twice my age and old enough to be my mother – clocking in at a ripe 48 years. Much like puberty smooths thorny, mercurial teenagers into palatable, fully formed adults, decades of ageing have allowed this vintage to grow into itself. Masked behind the green glass is a liquid the colour of a lustrous gold coin. It has a gentle effervescence and a sumptuous, floral flavour yet still retains freshness – like a liquid snapshot of the 1976 harvest, frozen in time. I’ve never tasted a champagne like it. The bottle is, in fact, so old that Mathieu’s father, Jean Roland-Billecart, oversaw its making. Family is an enduring facet of this two-century-old champagne house, with a legacy of seven generations helming the ship since its beginning.
Family business
Mathieu Roland-Billecart
Lief Carlsson
A bottle of brut sous bois
Yvan Moreau
Billecart-Salmon is a rare breed, as one of the few legacy champagne houses still family-owned and run. “We are the 200-year-old turtle,” laughs Mathieu while showing us around Clos Saint Hilaire. It’s a biodynamically managed plot used as a single vineyard in its own right, overlooked by a statue of a man called Saint Vincent. While some drew the short straw in the patron saint department (naming no names, St Cornelius, patron saint of earache), Vince lucked out as the guardian of wine. The winery is a few minutes walk from the plot, a collection of biscuit-hued buildings, some draped in ivy, located in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. Billecart-Salmon is one of the few hallowed houses not based on Avenue de Champagne in Épernay, a clout-heavy mile-long stretch of road akin to the Beverly Hills of bubbles.
Running a family business might sound to many like a prerequisite for WW3, but as Mathieu explains, a transgenerational approach to making champagne means you’re accountable for what you produce and pass on. There are decades of experience to call upon in times of tumult, too – he can give his 101-year-old great-uncle a bell when encountering a growing season he’s unfamiliar with. Despite being born into the business, Mathieu was not destined to run it. Previously working for 15 years in mergers and acquisitions for Ernst and Young in London, the invite from his 95-year-old grandfather to take the reins was flattering but unexpected.
Vineyard of Clos Saint Hilaire
Lief Carlsson
In the same way that cross-pollination is crucial for a flower to thrive, the family business is not run in a vacuum. The eight-person-strong tasting committee comprises four family members alongside four non-family, including past and present cellar masters. Champagne making isn’t something you go into if you’re seeking out a hit of instant gratification, and the tasting committee are entrusted with the titanic task of blind-tasting every vinified plot at every stage of its evolution.
“From December to late March, we’re tasting 500 wines per month. I have to taste more than drink – otherwise, I would be dead!” laughs Mathieu. This process may be arduous, but it’s crucial to ensure the blends of vin clairs for all the cuvées maintain a uniform house style through the years despite the wax and wane of vintages.
To hell with interesting
Sun shining over the vineyard
Lief Carlsson
“I don’t want to make interesting wines,” says Mathieu. “The raw, physical enjoyment from food and drink is one of the most basic pleasures you can get. People have made wine so complicated. Our goal is to make champagne that makes people smile. That’s why we wake up in the morning.”
An empty glass is the greatest compliment, and to achieve this, Billecart-Salmon rests on the basic principle that if you do the small things right every day while no one is watching, the large, important ones will take care of themselves. This starts with its 300 hectares of vineyards spread across Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne and Côte des Blancs, responsible for growing pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay, respectively. Billecart-Salmon owns one-third, another third are managed under its viticulture management contracts, and the final third of grapes are purchased from long-time grower partners. Billecart-Salmon will always buy grapes over pre-made wine.
Billecart-Salmon’s champanes are revered for freshness, tension and a backbone of acidity – achieved with a lower fermentation of 3-4 weeks over 2-3 days at low temperatures not exceeding 13°C. You can’t cheat with time, so Billecart-Salmon regularly exceeds the minimum periods of 12 months and three years outlined for ageing on the lees for non-vintages and vintages. Like relics, many of the vintage cuvées hang out on the lees for decades in order to guarantee longevity.
A donkey grazes through vines in Clos Saint Hilaire
Lief Carlsson
You could assume that being family-owned and run for over two centuries ingrains a resistance to change, but each generational passing of the baton at Billecart-Salmon ushers in new approaches to winemaking and vineyard management. Mathieu’s nucleus of attention rests on long-term vision, and part of this is moving towards biodynamic and organic production. “Mildew, oidio (powdered mildew) and marketing are the biggest diseases of champagne,” says Mathieu, keen to enforce responsible land practices while not making sweeping statements you can’t stand by years later. “98% of vineyards will say they’re organic, but 2% are certified. It’s easy to make big claims one year and then change your policy the next.”
Since Mathieu’s takeover, a characteristic of the house that hasn’t always been the case is a shift towards low-dosage champagne, with much smaller amounts of sugar added after disgorgement (the process of removing the dead yeast from bottles after the second fermentation). There’s no longer the concept of house liquor, meaning every dosage is made to measure for each of the cuvées. “If you really care about wine and terroir, why are you putting loads of sugar in your wine?” he says. “We see sugar as the 52nd and final ingredient, after the 51 base wines.”
Despite being a relatively small producer, making roughly 2.5m bottles per year (some of the largest houses produce 30m bottles), Billecart-Salmon has been quietly accumulating a substantial, loyal fan base over the years, which became particularly apparent during the pandemic. From 2019-2020, they were among the few producers in Champagne to maintain similar sales compared to pre-Covid despite the complete shutdown of hospitality. As Mathieu explains, people who liked to drink Billecart-Salmon in restaurants but couldn’t get hold of it reached out to the champagne house to buy directly. While others were on furlough, they worked during lockdown, with Mathieu as both CEO and receptionist.
Fantastic four
Barrels in the cellar
Lief Carlsson
Like seedlings breaking through the soil, we ascend from the winery’s dank, subterranean tunnels to its brand-spanking tasting room. It’s one of the latest additions to the estate, complete with a central table laid with gossamer-thin glasses and ceramic spitoons. We’re here to taste four different kinds of champagne, which Mathieu believes represent Billcart-Salmon’s savoir-faire.
Mathieu is adamant that Billecart-Salmon don’t do ‘getaway wines’, so each of these bottles – the brut réserve, blanc de blancs, brut sous bois and brut rosé, sit as equals to each other, serving different purposes. There’s a six-digit code on the back of each that can be typed into My Origin for complete traceability and transparency. If you like to geek out on details of dosage and vinification, hunt down these numbers like a falcon.
The house
Lief Carlsson
It’s easy to get bogged down with the technicality of each, so I find it helpful to learn about the wine in terms of its ideal scenario. Pour a glass of the blanc de blancs if you’re on a balmy beach in Biarritz, lowering your sunglasses as you spoon mignonette onto an oyster. The brut réserve begs to be poured if you’re cradling a steaming bowl of chicken fricassée in a candlelit room during the hibernal season. Searching for a versatile champagne that’s as comfortable at brunch in Singapore as it is lunch in Helsinki? You’ll want to order the brut sous bois. And the brut rosé? Mathieu says there’s no better Friday night company than a glass of Billecart-Salmon’s most famous tipple, accompanied by a slice of pizza or a plate of comté.
Often, the joy of expensive and exalted wines, like champagne, collapses under the weight of what they represent. But in my brief 48 hours in Mareuil-Sur-Aÿ, it’s clear the pleasure of drinking is the linchpin of everything Billecart-Salmon does. Bingo might be a game of luck, but there’s nothing random about well-made champagne.
