Once again the team from Oddbins in Clarkston come up with an interesting tasting. The timing is certainly appropriate, we're just back from the Champagne region and within a month they suggest to do a tasting of all the Bollinger and Billecart-Salmon Champagne they stock.

Quite an impressive line-up actually and Billecart Rose is one of my favourites so a great opportunity to try the rest of the range. And impressive it is.

A total of five different Billecarts and three Bollingers get a grilling of the sixteen tasters overall and Matt and Shane, from the Clarkston store.

Impressive the wines certainly are, although tastes clearly vary on what's deemed to be best. Both houses produce quality Champagnes but in very different styles. Billecart-Salmon to my mind makes the lighter, more elegant and feminine style, whereas Bollinger is full on, complex and very forceful often oak aged and not as fruity.

Billecart-Salmon:

Rose NV

Soft raspberry nose and a nice creamy mouse. Fresh, fruity and elegant. Quite complex and simply a beautiful rose.

Brut Reserve NV

A slight yeastiness on the nose. Soft red fruits and apple. The palate is fresh and lemony. Wonderful.

This wine ended up getting five stars in Decanter Magazine's recent tasting of Non-Vintage Champagnes, quite an achievement if you consider only two wines were deemed five-star material.

Demi-Sec NV

A sweeter version (demi-sec contains anywhere from 33 to about 50 grams of sugar) with a more golden colour. Slightly honeyed nose and some wholemeal toasty characters. Think organic honey on brown toast. Very soft and creamy palate. Good structure. A nice dessert wine.

Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru NV

A nose that reminds me of digestive biscuits. It is light, fresh and very elegant, green apples and lemons. Made from pure Chardonnay from Grand Cru vineyards, mostly in the Cote des Blancs.

Cuvee Nicolas Francois Billecart 1996

A toasty nose with a wonderful complexity. Lemon sherbet, very creamy with a good length. A great year that will keep for a bit.

Bollinger:

Special Cuvee NV

Fermented in oak, spent three years on its lees and contains around 10% reserve wines (fairly high).

To my mind this gives an old-fashioned Champagne. A biscuity, yeast nose. Much sweeter on the palate, very forceful, creamy and structured. Less of the freshness that I personally like in a Champagne. Good nonetheless.

Grande Annee 1997

Starts with quite a yeasty nose and a sherry character, quite nutty. The palate is powerful , creamy, absolutely not fruity. Very masculine and I find it a bit one-dimensional. Maybe it needs food, but this to me is like a body builder trying too hard to impress.

RD 1995

RD stands for Recently Disgorged, in this case in late 2004.

The nose is more restrained, a bit softer and still with the toasty, nutty character. It seems to have more complexity (a better year, or more age perhaps?) Still very powerful, but also showing acidity. Good balance and length, I much prefer this to the 97.

Ok, so which one is it I hear you ask. No clear winner here, no points either. They all have their merits. The Grande Annee '97 is not to my taste, it has simply no freshness and I expected more for £60. Personally I prefer the Billecarts and the truly tasty ones are the Rose and the Blanc de Blancs, which both retail around the £40 mark. For a basic NV you can do much worse than the elegant Brut Reserve NV, which is around £25.

Another Billecart Rose:

On our way back from Champagne and unable to resist the temptations of London, we popped into Fortnum & Mason and when inspecting their house labels found out their Rose NV is actually made by Billecart-Salmon. Retailing at £23.50 this had to be a bargain as it's almost half its price. So a week or so back we decided to put it to the test against the real thing.

Although a good rose, it didn't quite have the same finesse. The colour already gave away the difference, more pink rather than the slightly coppery colour of the genuine article. The bubbles were not quite as creamy and the acidity was quite marked with less elegance. Overall worth the money but not the same Champagne. I'm not sure if it is down to the ageing time, which may well be shorter, or if it's an entirely different blend.

A matter of taste, I suppose.

Oddbins Tasting May 2005

Oddbins Tasting Club