Winemaker Notes
This cuvée Blanc de Noirs vinified in oak casks allows the richest of the terroir and the purity of the wine to express itself. This rare vintage of incredible typicality will live on for future decades with strength and elegance.
The magic of a terroir blended with expertise and ancestral know-how, reveals a deep yellow gold hue, underlined by intensely golden reflections.
The graceful effervescence of fine bubbles softened by the patina of time. A noble, racy expression with an extremely complex, vinous impact on the nose (touch of biscuit, fresh roasted hazelnuts, white pepper). A refined development highlighting the scintillating concentrations of ripe and intense fruit (nuts and sweet spices). The ample and imposing texture, with hints of citrus fruit flesh and pears in syrup (candied lemon zest, mandarin pulp), emerges against a base note of panettone. With a richness bursting with flavours (puffed buckwheat and precious wood), the wine is carried by a fullness of taste with bewitching charm culminating in a deliciously chalky root mineral.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Baked raspberries, salted yellow plums, figs, walnuts, orange zest, mahogany and some toasted vanilla on the nose. Medium-to full-bodied with beautifully integrated, very fine bubbles. Dry, with exciting and unique white-pepper and sea-salt notes. Seamless. So harmonious. Salty and spicy clove notes evolving at the end. Amazing precision.
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Vinous
The 2006 Le Clos Saint-Hilaire is fabulous. In this radiant year, the Clos Saint-Hilaire has a touch
more mid-palate sweetness and generosity, but that's a good thing, as it balances some of the
more austere leanings that can make young vintages hard to appreciate upon release. Apricot,
lemon confit, ginger, graphite, spice and crushed rocks are strands in a gorgeous, captivating
tapestry that dazzles right out of the gate.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Disgorged in November 2020 with two grams per liter dosage, Billecart-Salmon's newly released 2006 Brut Le Clos Saint-Hilaire is showing well, unwinding in the glass with aromas of pear, mirabelle plum, dried fruits, walnuts, bee pollen and spices. Full-bodied, layered and vinous, it's a concentrated, muscular young wine, allying maturing flavors with broad structural shoulders and racy acids and concluding with a long, resonant and slightly mordant finish. From a parcel planted in 1964 and vinified entirely in oak, this is a powerful Champagne of considerable presence that needs some more time on cork to unwind and round out.
Rating: 95+
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Wine Spectator
This chiseled Champagne is defined by rapierlike acidity, with fine, tightly meshed flavors of plumped white cherry, poached apricot, marzipan, espresso crema, smoked nut and Gran Marnier liqueur that open slowly on a lively, lacy mousse.
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Decanter
Although it was disgorged in November 2020, Mathieu Roland Billecart has been keen to delay the release. The ageing post disgorgement is just as important as that before it and sometimes overlooked, he maintains. The wine has an attractive Welsh gold colour, a lively and persistent mousse, and seductive aromas of nectarine, greengage and Victoria plum. I even noted a hint of spearmint. The palate maintains a youthful nervosité; behind that generous fruit, including red fruit (cherry mainly), hints of brioche and hazelnut and then an authoritative finish. Great potential. Drinking Window: 2022 - 2036.
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.’