The rarest Champagne in town at the best restaurant in Atlanta you've never heard of?

On a beautiful Wednesday night in Atlanta, I was lucky enough to take part in an extremely exclusive wine and food event at a restaurant I’d never heard of before. It’s called Capolinea, and it’s located inside the brand new Signia by Hilton Atlanta hotel in downtown Atlanta. When I received the invitation, the place was described as “Atlanta’s signature fine dining restaurant.” Held in their private dining room, with only 18 seats available, it was centered around tastings of five different Billecart-Salmon Champagnes selected by Sommelier Marcella Castaneda and paired with a four-course menu (including lobster, caviar and steak) prepared by Chefs Jewel Ortiz and Christian Quinones.

I leapt at the opportunity and quickly reserved spots for Dio and myself. Truth be told, she’s not into wine like I am. It’s just not her thing. However, she does actually like Champagne, but I don’t think she’d ever had any Champagne from this particular producer. So, she was curious about this dinner as well. Her favorite champagne is (well, was!) the 2012 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame, (with label artwork by one of her favorite artists: Yayoi Kasama!). When I told her they were going to be serving another 2012, that got her kind of excited, because she kind of knows what that means.

We both unfortunately deal with food allergies which required us to request some modifications to the menu in advance. This was a very seafood-heavy dinner, and I can’t have seafood. She can’t do gluten. However, the folks at the restaurant were great to work with and they easily swapped out the problematic items for us.

Come the night of the dinner, we get dressed up and make the short, ten-minute drive from our house to the almost 1,000-room Signia by Hilton Atlanta hotel. It’s right by Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Valet parking was kindly included with the dinner, and before you know it, we’re walking into this big, imposing lobby with a ton of glass windows. In some ways, it felt a little sterile, but I think that mainly had to do with the fact that it’s a very new hotel. Like, it’s only been open since the beginning of this year!

When I first started mentioning this event to people, I could not find anyone I knew that had even heard of the place. I’ll say that after eating there, I think that’s going to change. As it was quite an impressive experience from start to finish. And that’s coming from me — someone who is generally not a fan of restaurants which are located inside of hotels. Usually, if I am staying in a hotel (no matter how nice), I tend to avoid eating in their restaurant. Why? I guess I just came to the conclusion awhile back that the focus is usually on the hotel, which leaves the restaurant as kind of an afterthought.

Now, that being said, there are certainly exceptions to this rule.

Take Atlas, for example. That’s an Atlanta restaurant that received it’s first Michelin star recently. It’s one of the very best places to eat in Atlanta, and it’s in a hotel! But I am usually quite hesitant to try most of these places, as I’m very suspect that you just end up overpaying for mediocre food out of the convenience of dining where you are staying.

Very few hotel restaurants I have ever dined in have been exceptional, but Capolinea was exceptional. You can tell that an awful lot of thought was put into the presentation and the menu here. It was a treat. I feel they put their very best foot forward with this special, 18-person event dinner, so it was pretty amazing. The main course - the Wagyu Short Rib - in particular was out-of-this-world good. Not to mention all the incredible champagne!

So, we meet some of the other guests — which included the CEO of the development group that built the hotel and the rep from the distributor who brought in the champagne — and they poured the first glass, which was their reserve. Of course, it’s not going to be the best of the night, but it was a good start. They call it their “introductory” champagne, and while it was very nice, it wasn’t particularly special or memorable. Then they welcome everyone and explain that this was the very first wine dinner they’d ever hosted at this restaurant.

Now, in Atlanta, wine dinners are quite common. We get invited to these things all the time, but this was Capolinea’s very first one. The Somm told us that her personal favorite champagne is Billecart-Salmon, which is why they were chosen to be featured first. At that point, Billecart-Salmon’s East Coast representative, Pierre Chichportiche is introduced. He was only in town for a few days, and this was the very first Atlanta event where he was going to pour this one particular champagne: the Cuvée Louis-Salmon Blanc de Blancs Brut 2012.

After just a couple of sips, Dio turns to me and says, “I really like this.” Now, hearing my wife say that is a little shocking to me, because there have been maybe three times total that she has ever liked an alcoholic beverage enough to mention it. She drinks non-alcoholic sparkling wine, which to me is like, “What’s the point?” The fact that she liked this and suggested we purchase some right then and there to take home with us (which is a common thing at tastings of this sort) led me to assume she might want one or two bottles.

Then she says, “We need a case.” I was like, “Okay, done!”.

We picked it up later that week - here’s the unboxing!

So, just as they would do in a Michelin star restaurant, the chef stood up before each course and explained what we were about to experience. And then Pierre would stand up and explain about each particular Champagne. What to look out for, etc… I took down as much information as I could whenever he spoke, and all of that can be found in my full and detailed tasting notes on Cellar Tracker:

Now, one of the things I did not include in my notes, but I want to mention here is that Billecart-Salmon is the oldest Champagne house in Champagne that is actually family-owned. They started in 1818 and now produce 18 different Champagnes (see what they did there?). So, they’ve been in business for 206 years, and their CEO is a seventh-generation member of the family.

According to Pierre, the house strives for all their products to represent what they call “the three F’s”: Fruity, fresh and finesse.

For those who may like to drink Champagne, but might not know an awful lot about its history or how it is produced and marketed, here is something important to consider: Most Champagnes are produced in a “non-vintage.” manner. Generally speaking, when it comes to wine, each year’s crop is going to taste noticeably differently, right? So, you’ll have a 2023 vintage, a 2024 vintage and so on. They’re always different, and that’s part of what makes them so fascinating. But what they do in Champagne is they have something some folks call a “house style.” A given Champagne usually tastes the same from year to year, and that has nothing to do with mother nature!

It’s because they blend the wine from multiple vintages to remove the noticeably vintage characteristics. That way, anytime you walk into a store and buy a bottle of Champagne (if it’s denoted as ”NV” or “non-vintage”), it's going to taste the same, right? That consistency of flavor and depth is something that's highly desirable by a lot of people who drink Champagne. They have a favorite brand, and if they buy a bottle, they want it to taste the same. They love it, they keep buying it, and the Champagne houses are cool with that. So they all make a lot of non-vintage Champagne.

But the weather varies greatly from year to year in that region, so there are some bad years, and there are some good years, and then there are some great years where the weather just worked out perfectly. The wine that makes up the Champagne in a great year just has the structure to age, and in those years, Champagne houses (the top ones, at least), they'll do what's called an “Millesime,” which is just basically French for “vintage” - a vintage Champagne.

So, for example, this just released 2012 Billecart-Salmon Cuvée Louis-Salmon Blanc de Blancs hasn’t been made since 2009. 2009 was a great year, 2012 was a great year. The 2012 was just released because the house held it back, because they let it age in the bottle until it's ready to drink. We also learned that you just can't find this in the U.S. at all right now! When I spoke to the folks at Decatur Package Store, (where I picked it up because they worked with this specific store to bring in the wine), they mentioned that we're part of the first 50 people in Atlanta that have ever even been able to try the 2012, let alone purchase it by the bottle! So, this was is a super-rare opportunity for my wife and I to be able to attend this event and acquire this amazing Champagne!

Pierre was very forthcoming and helpful in his introductions, so we asked him a lot of questions. He was discussing the fact that they only release that specific Champagne in great vintages, and was explaining what it is that makes a particular vintage noteworthy. So, while everyone was eating, I asked him, “Who decides when a Champagne is a great vintage?” And he replied, “Well, it’s a great vintage.” Hah! I was like, yeah, I get that, but is there some sort of understood threshold? Like, what’s the criteria for selection? Did 2013 just barely miss it? Was 2010 okay? You know, would other Champagne houses do a 2010 or a 2013?

He offered that a lot of the other houses will produce a vintage Champagne every year, but that generates a lot of pressure to always create a great Champagne even in a “bad” year. So, Billecart-Salmon made the decision to only produce vintage Champagne in truly great years. I was most curious as to who the people are that actually designate what is and is not a “truly great year” for his particular Champagne house. Pierre replied that there was a panel of eight people who make that decision — which would have been all the answer I was looking for. But at that point, he said, “Hold on, hold on. That’s a great question.” And then he interrupted the dinner and said “I just got a great question that everyone should probably be interested in hearing…”

And he went on to say that there are four family members from the Champagne house that are basically tasting the wine before it’s disgorged (basically before they put the bubbles in it), and then they have the winemaker and the previous winemaker and the vineyard manager and the previous vineyard manager taste it too. So, in addition to the four family members, they have four people that are not in the family who help to judge the quality. He said that it’s extremely important that they look forward and are always improving, but that they also look back and respect the history of the house.

I thought it was pretty cool that both the current winemaker and the previous winemaker and the current and past vineyard manager get an equal vote on whether the family will make a particular vintage Champagne. I have no idea if that information is commonly known, or something proprietary that is not often discussed, but I found it fascinating, and wanted to share it with my readers.

He and I ended up talking a lot about other wine growing regions, like Bordeaux and Burgundy. We talked about vintages and bad years and good years, all kinds of stuff, really. And Dio and I got to chat with the other guests as well. There was another blogger. The fellow sitting next to me was a pilot and his wife a dentist. There was someone who works for a major movie studio, some friends of the Somm’s and other folks from within the wine industry. Plus, us and the CEO of the development company and his wife. All in all, an intriguing and eclectic group of people to be seated with!

Pierre wound up inviting us to come visit the house the next time we are in France, saying that we were all now good friends. I got the impression that this is not a place that is really open to the public at large, so it sounds like a good reason to make a trip, and a fairly special opportunity. We’ll see!

After everything was over, we walked back through the main restaurant, which was huge and featured a large window that overlooked Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It was a staggering view that you're not going to experience anywhere else. Just really spectacular.

One more thing I’d like to mention about Capolinea, while I’m thinking about it: In my opinion, the dishes we had at this private dinner were equivalent to those at a one or two-star Michelin restaurant. Dio and I have been to multiple three-star restaurants, so we kind of know the drill. This place, to me, is honestly on par with some of the Michelin restaurants in Atlanta, and it’s brand new. That’s shocking. Now, I have no idea what their standard menu and service is like, but if it’s anything like what we experienced the other night, we would definitely consider ourselves early adopters of this place.

Until next time, friends. Salut!

~ Brad