Winemaker Notes
An ideal blend allowing the personality of the Champagne region’s great Pinot Noirs to dominate, combined with the elegance and subtlety of Chardonnays and that signature touch of Pinot Meunier. The yellow color has soft golden undertones, naturally enhanced by a fine, dynamic effervescence. A shining, very radiant effect that brings out the full potential of nine years of maturation in our ancestral chalk cellars. The delicious intensity of precise fruit with citrusy and nutty notes (grapefruit pulp, slivered almonds). A nuanced sensory development built around pastry scents (raw butter, white fruit jelly). A masterful aromatic expression with a refined, refreshing purity. A nervy, charming, tactile delight (chestnut cream, fresh blueberries, and shortbread), emphasized by a delicate texture. The wine rises to a distinguished complexity with a persistent finale, crisply structured by the high-quality potential of such a sought-after vintage. A deeply sculpted vintage with a noble, exquisitely distinctive character.Enjoy to the fullest with red tuna, papaya, and avocado, or with pan-fried foie gras, peaches, verbena, rhubarb, and verjuice (prematurely harvested grape juice).Blend: 40% Pinot Noir, 33% Chardonnay and 27% Pinot Meunier
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2009 Billecart-Salmon Extra Brut is complex, generous, and drinking nicely. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits authentic aromas and flavors of earth, savory spices, and ripe apple. Pair it with linguine and clams. (Tasted: April 20, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Disgorged with two grams per liter dosage, Billecart-Salmon's 2009 Extra Brut Vintage is more giving and demonstrative than its 2008 counterpart, offering up inviting aromas of crisp stone fruit, yellow apple, brioche, honeycomb and warm pastry. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, with a pillowy mousse and a generous core of fruit girdled by bright acids, it's seamless and complete. Indeed, such is its charm and persistence that I tend to prefer it, at least for now, to the 2008.
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Wine & Spirits
A majority of red grapes (40 percent pinot noir and 27 percent meunier) from a majority of grands crus (73 percent) make up this pan-regional blend. Vinified in stainless steel, it has main- tained freshness over the course of long aging on the lees, presenting brisk, cool flavors of lime zest, star fruit and pear. That fruit complexity lasts, while the textural pleasure brings you back for another sip.
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James Suckling
This is a big, rich wine with lots of strawberry and red-apple character. It’s full and layered with very pretty fruit. Caressing and fresh at the same time. A bit ponderous. 40% pinot noir, 27% pinot meunier and the rest chardonnay. First time with pinot meunier in the blend, helping to maintain balance in the hot 2009 vintage. Drink or hold.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Associated with luxury, celebration, and romance, the region, Champagne, is home to the world’s most prized sparkling wine. In order to bear the label, ‘Champagne’, a sparkling wine must originate from this northeastern region of France—called Champagne—and adhere to strict quality standards. Made up of the three towns Reims, Épernay, and Aÿ, it was here that the traditional method of sparkling wine production was both invented and perfected, birthing a winemaking technique as well as a flavor profile that is now emulated worldwide.
Well-drained, limestone and chalky soil defines much of the region, which lend a mineral component to its wines. Champagne’s cold, continental climate promotes ample acidity in its grapes but weather differences from year to year can create significant variation between vintages. While vintage Champagnes are produced in exceptional years, non-vintage cuvées are produced annually from a blend of several years in order to produce Champagnes that maintain a consistent house style.
With nearly negligible exceptions, . These can be blended together or bottled as individual varietal Champagnes, depending on the final style of wine desired. Chardonnay, the only white variety, contributes freshness, elegance, lively acidity and notes of citrus, orchard fruit and white flowers. Pinot Noir and its relative Pinot Meunier, provide the backbone to many blends, adding structure, body and supple red fruit flavors. Wines with a large proportion of Pinot Meunier will be ready to drink earlier, while Pinot Noir contributes to longevity. Whether it is white or rosé, most Champagne is made from a blend of red and white grapes—and uniquely, rosé is often produce by blending together red and white wine. A Champagne made exclusively from Chardonnay will be labeled as ‘blanc de blancs,’ while ones comprised of only red grapes are called ‘blanc de noirs.’