Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne

The NV Champagne Brut Rose is an attractive pale salmon hue, with a fresh perfume of wild strawberry, ripe peach, white and red flowers, a hint of tropical fruit, and grapefruit. The palate is rounded, with fruit up front and through the mid-palate, and it has a silky and fresh lift. There is a wonderful ease and drinkability to this wine, which delivers balance and finesse. (AF) (11/2022)

Attractive salmon color with aromas of dried strawberries and lemons, as well as hints of flowers. Full-bodied with tight tension from the fine phenolics that run through the palate. Hints of white pepper, peaches and sliced green strawberries with some candied lemons, too. Always an excellent bottle. 40% chardonnay, 30% pinot noir and 30% pinot meunier. (6/2022)

Sleek and finely knit, with a lovely, satiny mousse gliding across the palate, carrying flavors of white raspberry, peach skin, blanched almond and oyster shell. Long and mouthwatering, with hints of ground ginger and pink grapefruit pith on the elegant finish. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. (AN, Web-2023)

The NV Rosé, base 2019, is bright, lifted and refreshing. Crushed red berry fruit, mint, white pepper and chalk are very nicely delineated. There's terrific depth and texture to fill out the soft, curvy contours. The 2019 base Rosé is fabulous. In fact, it is one of the best recent releases I can remember tasting. (AG) (5/2023)

Currently based on the 2016 harvest, this is floral and citrussy, showing a lithe, graceful balance. It’s a blend of 40% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir and 30% Meunier, with about 40% of reserve wine, and red wine accounts for 7% of the blend. Its delicate, subtly expansive flavours of raspberry and strawberry are enlivened by a tangerine-like acidity, and while it feels ripe and full in flavour on the palate, it never loses its sense of refinement and poise, finishing with detailed length and depth. (PL) (5/2021)

Based on the 2018 vintage, Billecart's new NV Brut Rosé incorporates 40% reserve wines and some 6% still red wine. Bursting with scents of sweet red berries, peonies, stone fruits, white cherries, freshly baked bread and spices, it's medium to full-bodied, pillowy and charming, with a seamless and enveloping core of fruit and a lively, fine-boned profile. (WK) (8/2022)

A fine composition of red fruits and taut citrus, this Champagne is poised and fragrant with acidity and light tannins. (RV) (12/2023)

Bright coppery pink. A pretty strawberries-and-cream nose that leads straight to raspberries galore in the mouth. Blood orange, too, with a suggestion of tamarind chutney. Frankly fruity and frankly delicious. The balance is just right for food – in fact the wine was surprisingly good with a rich, slow-cooked pheasant red-wine casserole, and equally good with roasted tomato-and-courgette frittata the following day. (TC) (2/2023)

What could be more civilized than treating your special someone (or yourself) to an aperitif of rosé Champagne? For good reason, the Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé defines the entire rosé Champagne category. Composed of 40% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir and 30% Meunier, it gets its color and rosé flavor from 8% red wine. The red wine is almost exclusively sourced from Billecart’s home village of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, from massal-selected Pinot Noir plots of 60–80 years old. These plots are picked at still red wine ripeness—12% potential alcohol—and then de-stemmed and cold macerated before fermentation. It is this red wine that makes the Billecart Rosé so special, and unfortunately also limits the supply. The finished product is the most elegant, restrained, dry, and delicate wine that one could drink. The complexity is there if you search for it, but the pleasure is easy to find!