93 Points International Wine Cellar
"Pale, green-tinged yellow. A complex bouquet displays scents of green apple, pear, lemon zest, toasty lees and honeysuckle. Packs a solid punch but conveys a weightless quality, offering sappy orchard fruit and citrus flavors along with suave mineral and floral qualities. The toasty note returns on the long, impressively incisive finish."
winemaker's notes:
"An all-Chardonnay blend has obviously spent quite a time on tirage (hence the price, I assume), developing lots of rather Dom Pérignon-like yeast autolysis racy depth apparent on the nose. It manages that trick of having quite enough elegance and acidity to refresh (no need to drink this champagne, unlike many other fuller-bodied examples, with food) but not a hint of greenness or tartness. Bravo, Billecart-Salmon, a well-run family company that has never been accused of undercharging but which does produce the goods.
You may well wonder whether a non-vintage wine without the gravitas of multi-vintage blends such as Krug Grande Cuvée or Laurent Perrier Grand Siècle could possibly be worth as much as many a decent vintage-dated champagne. The answer, I swear, is yes.
I tasted it alongside the considerably more expensive Bollinger Grande Année 1996 and La Grande Dame 1995 and preferred it to both. The Bollinger will presumably blossom in about five years' time but for the moment it is almost aggressively youthful. The Grande Dame has a lovely broad nose but seemed a bit loose on the palate compared to the exciting tension of the Billecart."
Jancis Robinson, MW