Billecart-Salmon Cuvee Louis Salmon 2009 (or the Villa post)
Grape: Chardonnay
Looks: The gold of Villa’s lion. Fine bead and many bubbles.
On the nose: Just classic champagne: brioche, lemon curd, lime, touch of pineapple and mango. Delicious.
On the palate: Almond, citrus, and brioche. Salty minerality. Mousse like texture really complements the lemon curd notes. Everything is integrated. Delicious acidity. Sparkling mineral water & lemon on the finish cleans palate and prepares for next sip.
Price Point: 150 EUR / 1739 NOK
Terningkast: 5/6
I’ve been meaning to write this tasting note for a week now, but with a kid, the Norwegian holidays, and a cabin there has not been a lot of time to write. Otto has begun to army crawl around our living room and investigate cables and firewood, which is great, but much more time consuming than the preceding roll around and smile phase. You beg for babies to develop and move around, then, once they do, you silently wish that they would just stay in one place again. I’ve been thinking a lot and it’s all been just sort of swimming around in my brain, so this will be a longer note.
There’s also been a lot of great wines drank in the interim that have gone unnoted. That’s life, and maybe I’ll come back to them. My stepdad, mother-in-law, and her friend Aksel all visited the cabin this weekend and brought some very interesting and delicious bottles. But I have to say that it was also nice to make some space to just drink wines with family and laugh, without feeling the need to be cerebral and detailed.
On 17. Mai (Norway’s constitution day) we opened a magnum of Billecart-Salmon reserve, so the delay on this tasting note did wind up giving me a better frame of reference for the differences between Billecart-Salmon’s entry level and their named vintage cuvees. Billecart-Salmon is one of the more popular premium houses, so I’ve drank a decent amount of it over the years, but the problem is that there is what seems like 100s of different bottlings to keep track of across the entire gamut of price points. Armed with this context, I can now safely say that Louis Salmon 2009 is one of their more special bottlings, and it was a pleasure to taste.
To buy this bottle I went out to the best branch of Vinmonopolet in Oslo with the mission of finding something unique to keep on ice in the event that Aston Villa qualified for the Champions League for the first time in my lifetime. We’ll get to the wine in a bit (skip down to below the fold if you’re desperate), but the whole Champions League thing is a big deal, at least to me. Some of you reading might support a club like Manchester United or Liverpool, where NOT qualifying for the Champions League would be a crisis, and, therefore, me celebrating just qualifying seems “small time”, but this was anything but small for me and wound up feeling like a big moment in my life.
I played football as long as I can remember. My mom was the coach of my team when I was five years old and comedically came to practice with a big book on coaching soccer, opened to the section on drills, and yelled them out at us. She was by far our best coach, in my opinion. During games we would run to the ball in packs. A bit later, my uncles got me into football on television. The elder of the two spent his whole adolescence with my grandmother and grandfather in Italy and was indoctrinated into supporting Inter (the younger was still a young child when they moved). I vividly remember watching the 2006 World Cup final with them on a tiny TV. They ranted and raved about Totti and Del Piero, I paced around the living room during the penalty shootout, driven wild by the tension, and had the name Marco Materazzi etched into my brain. We all cheered when Cannavaro lifted the trophy, even though I felt a bit of a soft spot for Zidane’s outburst of passion. I saw myself in that as a teenager, rage taking over. It was a moment too human for the entertainment I was used to. This was football: theater, bliss, and agony.
Shortly after that, we got a full cable package at home for the first time, and I was able to watch football on TV. The first match I watched on the now-defunct Fox Soccer channel was Aston Villa vs. Manchester City, and would prove to be a real sliding doors moment for the prospect of me seeing my football club achieve any level of near-term success. Gabby Agbonlahor scored a hat-trick in the span of 7 minutes to send Villa from drawing 1-1 to leading 4-1, before the Croatian Vedran Corluka scored a consolation for City to make the final score 4-2. That late goal sent something down my 16-year-old spine, and on the Tuesday after the match I was on the phone, calling live into Fox Football Fone-In and posing as a Villa fan. I complained that Gabby’s hattrick papered over the cracks of a bad defensive performance and that their second goal should be a warning shot for the team.
Afterwards I realized that I was now a Villa fan, as If I chose another team, my Villa posturing would be exposed as a scam. The future of my life in football was spoken it into existence on a stange talking head panel show, where two washed up former pros fielded calls and debated people like me. Warren Barton thought I spoke well, which was a big win, and told my immature brain I was headed down the right path. I’ve spent some time digging around for the episode online, but have had no luck. My best friend Colin would then also became a fan. He was the striker, and I was the goalkeeper for our high school. We either played FIFA or watched games together every day after school, and sometimes during lunch. These were the days that we wasted and will never get back. I cherish them.
Lads on tour
I followed Villa home and away when I lived in England, became a part of supporters groups in the US and Norway, and have generally devoted a large percentage of my life to caring about how roughly 23 strangers and their manager perform at their jobs. Some of these “23 strangers” have been just that, cold and anonymous: Joleon Lescott had a disastrous campaign in 2015/16, culminating in him posting a picture of his souped up Mercedes on twitter after facing criticism from supporters. Ross McCormack was supposed to be the goal scorer that would fire us back into the Premier League after we got relegated in 2016. He scored 3 goals for the club and claimed that he missed training because he locked himself inside of his compound and couldn’t climb over the fence. Steve Bruce just got a cabbage thrown at him.
But this current group of players finally succeeding feels better and different, because they “get it”. Four of them have been on the entire journey from the Championship to Champions League. John McGinn, Tyrone Mings, Jacob Ramsey, and Kourtney Hause. The first two, along with Emi Martinez, are some of my all-time favorites. McGinn is quick-witted, fiery, and works his giant behind off for the team every match. Mings is imperious in defense, sweeps up danger, and is a vocal leader. He is also outspoken for justice in a time when most players take the “shut up and play” approach. Emi Martinez, like many goalkeepers, is mercurial, a bit bizarre, outgoing, and a brilliant ambassador for the club. He believes. These three aren’t Villa’s best players, but they’re the three I’ve come to care the most about. They are emblems of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. If we win a trophy during his captaincy, I think McGinn is nailed on for a statue outside of Villa Park.
It’s important that the grouping of players I named is a triumvirate because the attitudes, personalities, and liveliness of the Villa supporters I’ve met could never be embodied by just one player. They are too diverse, too sad, and too silly, myself included. After almost 20 years supporting the team, I have my own baggage and embarrassments, yet there’s an overwhelming amount of good memories. On my first trip to Villa Park, myself and 13,000 strangers sang “If you love Villa, shoes off” while holding our sneakers in the air. Last season Colin, myself, and our partners all went to the final day of the season. Julie was pregnant with Otto, and at the final whistle 45,000 people burst into karaoke renditions of Jeff Beck’s “Hi Ho Silver Lining” and “Sweet Caroline” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. Pure euphoria. I like to think about Otto being able to hear it. It’s much harder to get a ticket today than it was back then.
I love this club because in a world of sameness, Villa still manage to be a bit idiosyncratic. When we’re good, you would think we would just enjoy it, but Villa fans will find something to whine about. When we’re bad, you would think we get down in the dumps, but instead (like in the 5-0 vs. Crystal Palace), we turn it into a party. That spirit, seeing things for what they are and either making the most out of the bad times or keeping yourself grounded during the good times (7-2 vs. Liverpool in the lockdown season) is something that has helped me navigate the up and downs of life, and I’m really really thankful that it was Gabby that scored that hat-trick for Villa all those years ago, and not Elano for City. Sunny days wouldn’t feel so special if it wasn’t for rain. Villa have had a decade and change of rain since I’ve been a supporter, but these sunny days are just all the more special for it. So if you’re ridiculing me for celebrating finishing 4th, just imagine how annoying I’ll be when we finally win a trophy!
Now I’ll talk about the wine. What did it taste like? I’m going to be honest with you, I jotted down some notes the next morning, but I don’t fucking remember. It tasted like Champions League football at Villa Park. Was it wasted as I sipped it in a plastic cup in the bath tub to soothe my frayed nerves? In some ways, yes, but in the big picture absolutely not. The thing about drinking wine is that you’re allowed to do it your way. It’s an alcoholic beverage made from grapes and time, not a secret society with commensurate rules to follow—although it can certainly also be that if you want it to be. If you want to drink box chardonnay with ice cubes and sparkling water in it, do it with pride! I am sick of hearing people apologize for drinking something how they want to drink it. My one rule for wine is that you should have an open mind; beyond that, it is just a drink. One of the most popular beverages in Northern Italy is a bicicletta, which is just campari and white wine on ice. The Italians are not embarrassed about it. They don’t say “I know this is bad, but is it ok if I ________”. They just drink it because it’s what they like.
As I sipped Louis Salmon 2009 out of a plastic cup in the bath tub at midnight, all of the memories above washed over me, and I was happy and free. I remembered the last time that I celebrated like this, when a late Jack Grealish goal against West Ham on the final day of the season meant that Villa would stay in the Premier League. Julie and I were in Santa Fe and I drove around the auburn landscape with the windows down, blasting all of the Villa songs. I remembered how happy she was that I was happy. That was a true release, this was more of a demure celebration; I’m a dad now.
So would it have been the same if I just drank a bottle of Veuve (or Andre)? Honestly, no. Not in the slightest. And that’s the great thing about drinking a special bottle like this, is that even if you’re distracted or tired, even if you’re plastered, you can remember that the wine rose to the occasion, and enhanced it. I could sit here and talk to you about how amazing the biscuit, brioche and citrus notes were—and they were great—or how the salty mineral water finish added complexity and finesse to an otherwise straight forward and good champagne. But I think it’s much more important from a recommendation perspective to just say that this is a champagne that can rise to the occasion.
