Billecart Salmon Cuvee 200 Bicentenary (1.5 L)

When Nicolas François Billecart and Elisabeth Salmon founded their house in 1818 — with Elisabeth's brother Louis Salmon as the original winemaker — they could not have anticipated that the technical obsessions of their successors would define a cuvée two centuries later. The Cuvée 200 Bicentenary is a magnum-format prestige release commemorating that founding, drawing on grapes sourced across the house's 300-hectare network spanning chalk-dominant soils of the Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs Grand Crus (Avize, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger), and Vallée de la Marne — the same chalk subsoil that runs beneath the 17th-century tunnel cellars in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, maintaining constant cool temperatures critical to the house's extended aging philosophy.

Vinification follows Billecart-Salmon's most distinctive technical signature: double cold-settling of the must followed by low-temperature fermentation at ~13°C over 3–4 weeks — a method borrowed from brewing and introduced by Jean Roland-Billecart in 1958, producing a purity of aromatic expression that faster fermentations cannot replicate. Malolactic fermentation is decided tank-by-tank and is typically blocked for prestige cuvées to preserve tension. Aging on lees in chalk cellars extends well beyond the legal minimum, consistent with the house's prestige tier standard of 10+ years. Dosage sits in Extra Brut territory, in line with the house's range-wide transition to lower dosage levels.

The 1.5L magnum format is not cosmetic: the larger volume slows secondary fermentation and lees contact, producing finer, more persistent bubbles and a longer, more gradual oxidative evolution than a standard bottle — a format particularly suited to the house's chalk-driven tension and the extended cellaring this cuvée demands.