Billecart-Salmon, Champagne (France) 2008

  In an introductory Zoom presentation, Billecart-Salmon leader Mathieu Rolland-Billecart joked, “If you don’t achieve greatness in 2008, you should quit making wine.”  The cellar master’s job is secure.  The wonderful thing about Champagne is its distinctiveness.  It’s fairly easy to pick up a glass of bubbly and say, “This is Champagne” or “This is not Champagne” and be correct, and yet the range of tastes of vintage Champagne between maisons can still be tremendously varied.  In this case, the structure is perhaps as important as its flavors – a big and rich Champagne, yet one with great finesse and complexity.  The flavors, of course, are quite charming – light, green, piquant fruity notes balanced with a little bit of brown bread – not brioche – and a hint of tannins that overlay a metallic minerality, like drinking bubbly from a tin cup instead of stemware.  Parts of the wine were vinified in very old barrels “for micro-oxygenation and roundness,” and, after its October 2020 disgorgement, it was allowed to rest for another year before release.