Salon Champagne Blanc de Blancs Le Mesnil 2015 750ml

This really smells like Montrachet. Aromas of cooked apples, chalk and hints of white flowers like jasmine and honeysuckle. Full-bodied and fresh for a warm vintage, with finesse and a silky texture. Very fine bubbles and hints of sophisticated brioche and croissant in the finish. From Mesnil. Great at the end. Stunning for 2015. Marvelous is the word. You can't stop drinking it. 5 g/L dosage. Drink or hold.

Released ahead of the 2014 rendition and originating from a dry, sunny growing season, Salon’s 2015 Brut Blanc de Blancs Le Mesnil, disgorged in spring 2025 with a dosage of six grams per liter, follows in the footsteps of 2013, continuing a run of releases that are friendly from the start, without the austere edge that has often characterized this cuvée in the past. It expresses itself from the glass with a deep bouquet of orange peel, linden and freshly baked bread mingled with notes of lemon confit and subtle hints of lychee and mango. Full-bodied, concentrated and broad, it is fleshy and charming, with a generous core of fruit underpinned by ripe yet racy acidity and enlivened by a pillowy mousse, before concluding with a long, saline finish. This is a structured, open-knit Salon that carries a similar substance to its two immediate predecessors and will not disappoint those who choose to open it in its youth, despite my strong recommendation to cellar it for at least a decade—if not longer—as I anticipate it will follow a comparable evolutionary trajectory to the 1990 rendition.