I was lucky enough to taste this wine in the morning, and then drink the same bottle at dinner. What a treat! When we tasted it in the morning, I loved the pale white gold color that still had a flash of green and the incredible bouquet of cream and nougat. The baguette toast I found in the morning tasting turned to a fine brioche by dinner time and showed a preview of what will happen with a little cellar time. While the nose was generous from the start, the wine showed compact, concentrated, and full of spectacular, linear cut in the mouth in the morning, then opened up in the evening with the food. I was able to find a great piece of Ahi, which I prepared three ways, as spicy tuna, tataki, and sashimi to pair with it. The food brought out the citric freshness of the wine and also the unbelievable quality of the finish. This is super long, expansive, chalky and full of lemony drive. After tasting more 2012 champagne than I can count, I am sure that this will go down as one of the greats.

If it's possible for Champagne's prestige cuvees to be more prestige-y than normal, than the 2012 vintage is for you. If you’re a fan of ethereal Blanc de Blancs champagne your ship from Mareuil-sur-Aÿ has just come in! If every champagne tasted like this, nobody would drink anything else. Created in 2018 (vintage 2006) to honor Billecart’s first cellar master and brother of co-founder Elisabeth Salmon, Louis Salmon, the 2012 Billecart-Salmon “Cuvée Louis Salmon” Blanc de Blancs is racy, sexy, clean, pure, mineral-driven, mind-blowing, and, most importantly, absolutely delicious! Former Chef du Cave Francois Domi and his team, including current Chef du Cave Florent Nys, crafted a masterfully balanced cuvée from the now mythic 2012 vintage. An assemblage of 100% Grand Cru Chardonnay - “Cramant (23%) for minerality, Chouilly (11%), and Oiry (6%)for finesse, and Mesnil-sur-Oger (60%) for the structure and longevity” - a quarter of the vin clairs were vinified in oak casks, aged for 9 ½ year on the lees, and was dosed at a low 3.9g/l. A sophisticated, delicate, and aromatic Blanc de Blancs, the “Cuvée Louis Salmon” has popping acidity, finesse, complexity, and a noble splendor that can only be found in a sparkling prestige cuvée. Almond, hazelnut, fresh bread, peach, pear, tart green apple, chalky minerality, citrus, and a whole meadow of white flowers. The barrel fermentation adds richness, length, and notes of vanilla and sweet spice. Drinking beautifully right now and age-worthy in the cellar. The “Cuvée Louis Salmon” is tasting luxury. I cannot recommend it enough.

If Billecart Salmon has one mission in the creation of their champagne it is this: Preserve Freshness. Good lord, this champagne is pure freshness captured from the spring of life itself. A bakery that just turned its lights off for the night, a salted tortilla with just-cut garden fresh Pico, the smell of brine on the beach of a well deserved vacation, mussels in white wine butter, a coral reef.....Cuvee Louis is a sheer master class on how to capture the pure essence a season, with cascading flavors of which none are identical, and complexity is inherent. Once in a while I am shown a bottle like this 2012 Cuvee Louis, take notes, and suddenly my writing on this one wine is a page and a half long list of flavors, adjectives, ideas, even concepts - most of them all: freshness.