" Located in Ambonnay, only five are full-time wine estates, living entirely off sales of their own wines in bottle. Among them is Billiot. Ambonnay is Pinot land; 350 hectares and only 20 of them Chardonnay. Ambonnay Pinot Noir seems to be the sweetest, most Volnay-like in the Montagne de Reims. (Bouzy, in contrast, is darker but more earthy, while Aÿ is firmer with less overt berried fruit). The Ambonnay signature might be strawberry, forest-floor, sweet-100s. All of which are certainly present in Billiot’s wines.

100% Grand Cru, particularly satisfying Pinot Noir here. Fresh, bracing red-grape Champagnes with long, swollen mid-palate flavors. Just 5 hectares in size, so availabilities are scarce!

Considering Billiot uses virtually no dosage (claiming his wines are ripe enough to do without) they do not taste significantly dry. In fact many of you seem to guess them fairly high in sweetness. Billiot does not filter his wines, and they never undergo malolactic fermentation. That makes them very frisky and reductive when they’re first disgorged, and occasionally a Billiot bottle will show a slightly metallic aroma for the first few minutes. That’s rare and nil if you hold the wines six months after disgorgement. Billiot seems to want liveliness most of all, as he can presume upon lavish and deep fruit flavors. If you know the wines of Egly-Ouriet (Billiot’s friend and neighbor) they couldn’t be more different. Egly pulls you down into its mealy-ripe depths; Billiot lifts you up on a billowing fountain of fruit. His wines have marvelous stamina and brightness. They’re hedonistic but not sloppy. Too firm and impeccable to be sloppy!" Terry Theise