Salon

History

1. 1905

   A furrier from Paris

   Eugène-Aimé Salon, the son of a wheelwright from Pocancy, made his fortune in Paris trading in hides and furs. In love with Champagne and with the chalk of Le Mesnil, he made a wine to his own idea: no blending of grapes or villages, just Chardonnay from one place. The first vintage was 1905, and for a long time the wine was drunk only by him and his friends.

2. 1920

   Salon goes on sale

   In the 1920s Salon began selling his wine. He was helped by his brother-in-law, a former cellarman in Le Mesnil, and his acquisitions included the one-hectare “Jardin de Salon” and a dozen or so plots in the commune. The first vintage sold was 1921, and in 1928 the Champagne made it onto the list at Maxim's in Paris.

3. 1945

   Salon 1928 in Hitler's cellar

   In 1940 the Germans looted hundreds of cases of Salon 1928 in France. In 1945 they were found in Hitler's cellar at the Kehlsteinhaus by Bernard de Nonancourt, a soldier in Leclerc's division and the future head of Laurent-Perrier. Aimé Salon himself died during the war, childless; his sister took over the house.

4. 1963

   Between corporations

   After the death of the founder's sister the house was bought by the Compagnie Dubonnet-Cinzano-Byrrh, then passed to Pernod Ricard. In 1988 it was taken over by the Laurent-Perrier group. The circle closed: Salon now belonged to the man who had once broken down the door to the stolen bottles.

5. 1997

   The Didier Depond era

   In November 1997 Didier Depond, the son of Loire growers and with the group since 1986, became president of Salon and of neighbouring Delamotte. The 1999 vintage closed the 20th century as the 37th Salon of the century, and the first vintage of the 21st century was 2002.

6. 2015

   The forty-fifth

   The latest Salon is the 2015 vintage, the 45th in the house's history. Summer 2015 broke records for sunshine and drought, and the harvest in Le Mesnil began on 8 September. The house describes this wine as a return to the source, to Aimé Salon's idea of 1905.

People

Curiosities

1. Only 37 vintages of Salon were made in the 20th century, from 1905 to 1999. The house calls this a phenomenon in the world of wine. source
2. Hundreds of cases of Salon 1928, looted by the Germans, were found in Hitler's cellar in 1945 by Bernard de Nonancourt, who bought the house 43 years later. source
3. A private customer can buy a few dozen bottles of a vintage at most, because a whole vintage is a few tens of thousands of bottles. source
4. Salon is poured in Japan Airlines first class, and Japan is the house's largest market. source
5. Enrico Bernardo, the world's best sommelier in 2004, counted Salon 1966 among “the greatest Champagnes ever tasted”. source
6. Xavier Thuizat, head sommelier at the Hôtel de Crillon, calls Salon an interpretation of Champagne “in its purest, most subtle form” and the identity of what is perhaps the region's finest commune, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. source
7. Delamotte, Salon's neighbour and brother, descends from a house founded in Reims in 1760, from which Lanson grew. The brand was revived in Le Mesnil in 1927 by Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt, Bernard's mother. source
8. At a Christie's auction in 1988 a bottle of Salon fetched more than five times its starting price. source