In 1818, Nicolas-Francois Billecart and Elisabeth Salmon were united in holy matrimony, and the famous house Billecart-Salmon was created. Almost 200 years - and 7 generations - later, B-S remains under family control, and finesse, balance, elegance remain their bywords. Billecart-Salmon used to be best known as the smallest of the Grandes Marques. Now that organisation is defunct, it is the quality of the wines which allows the house to be much better known. Billecart does not keep expensively carpeted office suites in W1 and the focus is on producing the best possible wines. It only produces 60,000 cases compared with the million or more of its bigger brethren. The house style is to make wines that reflect fruit and balance as well as terroir and this is especially true of the Rose which is a distinct star in the Billecart firmament. For this wine winemaker Francois Domi employs a cold fermentation technique which is unusual in Champagne but works extremely well here. For many people with broad tasting experience Billecart`s rose is the `go to`, with only Krug and Dom Perignon regularly scoring higher. Time on lees after the second fermentation is something that has never been skimped on here. As a result, all of Billecart`s wines show proper autolysis flavours which only appear after a decent time of interaction between the wine and those yeast remains.