Champagne Billecart-Salmon

Champagne, France

#27World's Best Vineyards 2024

Manicured gardens surrounding a 200-year-old oak tree welcome you to this classic Champagne maison – one of the few to remain family run since its foundation in 1818. The giant oak’s roots delve deep underground, all the way to the two kilometre-long seventeenth century chalk tunnels where the wines lay at rest (non-vintage bottles for between three and four years, and vintages – only produced in exceptional circumstances – for 10 years). Up in the picturesque village of Mareuil-sur-Äy, the single-hectare ‘Clos Saint-Hilaire’ vineyard (formerly the family’s tennis courts) is ploughed by horses and grazed by sheep, and you can glimpse this exclusive plot before sampling one of the individually-numbered bottles of Pinot Noir-driven fizz it begets.