Billecart-Salmon Cuvee Nicolas Francois Brut 2002

Professional Ratings

• 98 James Suckling

  Very impressive depth and detail here. The freshness is staggering. Citrus and grilled-hazelnut aromas lead to a palate that has a very concentrated, slightly creamy and taut feel. Super long and dense with lemon curd, white peaches and a toasty build to the finish. Superb! Drink or hold.

• 98 Decanter

  Always the finest wine of the house, now rightly promoted as their prestige cuvée. A luminous gold colour with green tints indicates how youthful this still is. It is hard to do justice to its very high quality - latent power and density without heaviness, and supreme finesse. Brillant with wood-roasted turbot. One of the greatest wines of a great year.

• 97 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  The 2002 Brut Cuvée Nicolas François was disgorged in January 2015 with four grams per liter dosage, and it's showing superbly, wafting from the glass with a complex bouquet that mingles confit citrus, peach and dried papaya with nuances of iodine, brioche and honeycomb. On the palate, it's full-bodied, broad and vinous, with a rich and layered core that's underpinned by serious structure and tension, concluding with a long and precise finish. This is one of the finest wines Billecart has released in the last decade, and it is well worth seeking out.

• 96 Wine Enthusiast
  With its ripe fruits, rich texture and layers of toast, this is a great wine. It shows the quality of the great 2002 vintage brilliantly. It's complex and concentrated with an array of mature fruit flavors that combine to a structured whole. It will improve with age, so drink this great Champagne through 2025 and perhaps longer. Cellar Selection.
• 95 Wine Spectator
  There's a buoyant, almost ethereal quality to this elegant Champagne, offering a rich range of blackberry pâte de fruit, crystallized honey, grilled nut and oyster shell flavors, set on a fine, chalky mousse. Long and mouthwatering, with a clean, citrus-infused finish. Drink now through 2027.
• 94 Wine & Spirits
  Billecart’s rigorous selection of pinot noir and chardonnay (60/40) for this prestige cuvée, in tandem with the remarkably powerful 2002 vintage, make this a youthful 14-year-old wine, still bright and floral, with an underlying density and concentration that predicts years of development ahead. It’s complex, voluptuous and savory, with depths of oyster-shell minerality and the brioche scent of clean, fine lees.