Charles Le Bel - Billecart-Salmon - Champagne Brut Inspiration 1818

Champagne Brut Inspiration 1818 - Charles Le Bel / Billecart Salmon

Charles Le Bel is a brand owned by the Billecart Salmon winery.

This Champagne celebrates the year the Maison was founded on the label and is a more affordable gateway to the very high quality of Champagne produced by the Maison Billecart-Salmon.

A "counter Champagne", we could say, that wants to be drunk on many different occasions and that aims to reinvigorate the idea of ​​champagne as a wine to be drunk rather than a luxury to be shown off.

Made with a classic blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Meunier from some of the best vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, Marne Valley and Côte de Blancs, the Brut Inspiration 1818 is vinified in steel at a controlled temperature and undergoes malolactic fermentation. The blend includes 40% reserve wines and the wine rests on the lees for 24 months in the Maison's underground cellars, which extend into underground tunnels dug into the chalk for two kilometers.

Fun facts about the Billecart-Salmon winery:

The Maison Billecart-Salmon is based in Mareuil-sur-Ay in the Champagne region of France, in the Marne department (the river that gives its name to the valley and the department). It is located a short distance from the more famous Épernay and about thirty kilometers south of Reims.

The Maison is today one of the very few large companies in Champagne that can still boast family management and are not led by large groups.

Born in 1818 with the marriage of Nicolas François Billecart and Elisabeth Salmon, the Maison is today led by the seventh generation with Mathieu Roland-Billecart assisted by Antoine Roland-Billecart.

The family property extends over many hectares and the vineyards include 40 Crus, most of which are within twenty kilometres of the city of Épernay between the Marne Valley, the Montagne de Reims and the Cote des Blancs.

Worth noting is the ownership of the vineyards within the Clos Saint-Hilaire (dedicated to the patron saint of the church of Mareuil-sur-Ay), 1 hectare of Pinot Noir vinified alone in a limited edition of 3500/7500 bottles depending on the vintage.

The Maison relies on traditional methods without excluding new technologies and indeed, since 1958, cold racking has been introduced together with low-temperature fermentation to always guarantee the integrity of the wine and maintain intact the finesse and elegance that characterize the Maison's Champagnes.

The vinification takes place in steel tanks at controlled temperatures and a new vinification cellar built in 2000 allows all the parcels to be vinified separately.

In all the labels produced by the Maison outside of the vintage ones, the use of reserve wines in variable percentages is foreseen and these are refined in two separate recently built cellars (2010), one with 400 oak barrels at controlled temperature and the second with 28 foudre barrels (much larger than barriques or tonneaux) of 80 hectolitres each.

In 2018, the maison celebrated 200 years of family management with a special dedicated label produced in a limited edition of 1818 numbered Magnum bottles.