Opinion | Wine opinion: Delamotte Blanc de Blancs NV champagne is an insider's choice

Not to do myself out of a job, but a smart way to get some wine tips is to open the fridge in the kitchen of a Bordeaux négociant. You'll almost certainly find a bottle of Denis Dubourdieu's dry white AOC Graves, Clos Floridene. Next to it, I think you'll come across a bottle of Delamotte Blanc de Blancs NV champagne.

The reason that this is such an insider's choice is because the grapes from Delamotte are sourced from the same place as Champagne Salon, perhaps the world's rarest champagne: one that is only made in specific named years, and sold as a vintage. When a vintage is not declared (and Salon champagne not bottled) those same grapes end up in the citrus zing of a crisp Delamotte.

It's a beautiful, delicate champagne, trembling with understated complexity, a signpost to just how astonishing Salon can be. That's doubtlessly why those same négociants turned up in force last week when CEO Didier Depond brought the latest Salon vintage, the 2002, to Bordeaux for an unveiling (one of the later stops on its international release tour, no doubt because more than 90 per cent of Salon leaves France).

This is the first vintage released since 1999, and although we have the 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008 to come, there has been no vintage since 2008.

Even without the rarity factor, Salon is a wine that breaks all the rules. For a start, unlike the vast majority of champagnes, it is not a blend of grapes from different villages. It is 100 per cent chardonnay and comes only from six hectares grown in the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger on the Cotes de Blancs (both Salon's own and those bought in from a select group of neighbours).

Mesnil grows only 100 per cent grand cru vines, and Salon makes no more than 60,000 bottles each vintage, meaning that most countries get just a few thousand bottles per vintage. There have only been 38 vintages since 1911, including the 2002 that we came to taste - and they are aged for an average of 10 years before release.

We were fortunate to have Alain Terrier with Depond. He has been cellar master of Laurent-Perrier, Delamotte, Krug and Salon. He started in 1975 and retired just under a year ago.

Terrier was responsible for three of the four vintages that we were tasting - Delamotte 2004, Salon 2002 and Salon 1997 (in magnum, drinking beautifully right now) and the 1962 ("the year I was born", says Depond, "so not as old as all that"). Terrier explained that the label was created as a love song to champagne by Eugene-Aimé Salon, when he bought a row of pure chardonnay vines in Mesnil in 1905.