The family run Champagne house Billecart-Salmon boasts over 200 years of making top-notch wines—and became famous around the globe thanks to the iconic Brut Rosé—but seventh-generation Mathieu Roland Billecart isn’t one to rest on his laurels. The Champagne native took over as group CEO a year ago and continues to pursue the maison’s quest for quality while experimenting with innovative new blends that show just how contemporary a classic Champagne brand can be.
What does your day-to-day schedule look like?
It really varies depending on the time of the year. Between November and March, I tend to be mostly at the estate since I have to do tastings with the team once or even twice a day to sample the base wines, decide on our blends, the dosage of cuvées, what is ready to ship or not.
Before COVID, in the spring and summer, I would travel throughout France and across the world to meet clients and distributors. It’s a great time to learn and exchange with them and hear first-hand what people have to say about some of our latest cuvées, for example.
How about during harvest time?
Harvest, which is normally September, is a little different. I spend a lot of time with the team going around our parcels and the vineyards ensuring the quality of the grapes, optimizing picking time, meeting with our grower partners. Every evening, I am in the pressing rooms to review the quality of the pressed musts and plan with the team for the days ahead—which we do, of course, with a glass of champagne in hand.
The latest series, Rendez-vous, was recently launched with a Champagne dedicated to Pinot Meunier. Why did you decide to focus on this grape and how does this line stand out from others in the collection?
It is the first of a series of experiments we decide to share with the friends of the house and the 100% Meunier (2014 base) was the first one of those experiments to be ready. We really like Meunier as a grape variety and we have always been clear that it is the main grape in our Brut Réserve, so it felt right to put it under the spotlight as the first of that range.
The Rendez-vous with Champagne Billecart-Salmon range will give us more freedom to play, since we won’t have to constantly deliver a similar style like we do with a NV cuvée (like the Brut Rosé, for example). Each blend of cuvées will be different and short-lived, a one-off “pop up” cuvée that’s created as a limited edition.
How would you describe the “signature house style”?
All cuvées have to, with different expression and style of course, share the same DNA: finesse, elegance and balance
Champagne Billecart-Salmon is found at some of the most prestigious hotels and restaurants across the globe, from Hôtel Costes in Paris to Capella in Singapore. What has made this champagne synonymous with fine dining and why do some of the world’s most infamous chefs gravitate toward it?
We have always served an international elite of food and wine lovers (what we call gastronome in French). We serve them for their private consumption at home using a network of independent retailers, but we also want to be with them when they go out, and that’s naturally how we are associated with top gastronomic eateries and hotels. Also, many chefs in France recognized the great quality of the Billecart-Salmon way before others did, and they have therefore been great advocates for us. We owe a lot to them for where we are today in terms of notoriety with the gastronomic elite.