2009 Billecart-Salmon Extra Brut Champagne 750 ml

Scoring Billecart-Salmon is always cause for celebration, and since early 2020 we’ve been lucky enough to secure small allocations of their most prestigious vintage-bottlings—collector’s items like the $200+ Cuvée Louis Salmon and Cuvée Elisabeth.

But it’s been two and a half years since we’ve landed one of the most extraordinary buys in vintage Champagne: Billecart’s brilliant Extra Brut. 

Grown in the outstanding 2009 vintage, dominated by fruit from Grand and Premier Cru sites, and rested for a staggering nine years on the lees, the 2009 Billecart-Salmon Extra Brut Champagne was released last winter to great fanfare: 95 points from Wine Enthusiast plus a glowing review from Wine Advocate, which preferred it to the 2008—a bottle from one of the greatest Champagne vintages in history. 

That 2008 became one of our highest-rated vintage-Champagnes ever, and the 2009 is priced at about HALF of Billecart’s most prestigious offerings and barely more than their NV Brut Rosé!

This might be our last share of this wine until the next vintage—which will probably arrive in 2025.  

The nature of 200-year-old Billecart-Salmon is summed up in the story of New York wine legend Neal Rosenthal, who first obtained the Champagne in 1979 through a mercurial importer. It quickly became a sensation at Rosenthal’s shop. When his relationship with the importer soured and it seemed like Billecart might slip away, Rosenthal flew to Mareuil-sur-Aÿ to plead with the proprietor face-to-face—that’s how essential he believed Billecart was to his survival. 

After 200 years of operation, the house is still owned and operated by the Billecart family—and still producing the exquisite bubblies that have seduced countless wine lovers throughout the years.