One of the best-known names in all of Champagne, the house of Bollinger has released vintage Champagnes for almost 200 years – its first vintage release dating back to its foundation in the village of Aÿ, in 1829. Indeed, on a recent visit one of the highlights was learning about ‘Galerie ’29’: in 2010, whilst taking an inventory, an abandoned wine cellar was discovered hidden behind a wall of empty bottles. Containing long-forgotten bottles and magnums of reserve wines, deciphering the inscriptions allowed the team to determine the origins and vintage of certain batches, for example an 1886 Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, an 1893 Verzenay and a 1914 Aÿ. With the help of archive research one parcel proved to come from the 1830 vintage – one year after the house’s foundation.
Invited to visit for the launch of the much anticipated 2008 vintage (my tasting note already reported here), I didn’t get to taste that 1830 bottling, but in an extraordinary tasting prepared by cellarmaster Gilles Descôtes, I was priviliged to taste not only the 2008 in bottle, magnum and jeroboam, but a selection of vintages back to the 1918.
One hundred years on from the grapes being harvested, it was one of those moments when the wine might be (and was) sublime, but one’s mind immediately grasps for the context, which does not come much more significant than the signing of the Armistice treaty in November 1918, bringing the Great War to an end just as this wine was beginning it incredible story.
Bollinger famously ferments all of the base wine for La Grande Année in barrels. 3,500 small casks are aged between five and 35 years old, with an average age of 20. The barrels come from Burgundy – some from Chanson, which is part of the same group, but also from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Drouhin, Jadot and other famous names. Intriguingly, I also learned that Bollinger owns its own cork forest in Cuis, a village in the Côtes des Blancs, and has begun to cooper wood from these. Having seasoned the staves for the past three years, between 20 and 30 barrels from this forest would be used to ferment part of the 2019 harvest.
Old barrels is one of the secrets to the Bollinger style. We also got to taste wines from an experimental project – though to be honest, I suspect the experiment was meant to prove, rather than change, the house philosophy on barrels: we tasted the same wine that had been raised in a 20+-year-old barrel, a new barrel and a stainless steel barrel. There was no doubt my favourite sample was that from the older barrel, the new barrel marking the wine too firmly with vanilla aroma and flavour, whilst the steel-aged sample lacked something in terms of vinosity and fruit richness.
Most of Bollinger’s 178 hectares of vineyard are classified Grand or Premier cru, and Pinot Noir dominates – also making up 71% of the 2008 La Grande Année. Over 700,000 magnums resting in the cellars give an extraordinary library of of reserve wines for blending, and for Grande Année all riddling is by hand, as is labelling. Gilles explained that the dosage for the 2008 was “nothing complicated” – a blend of 2008 wine and sugar.
Don’t try this at home: the precise art of remuage, or riddling: encouraging the spent yeast cells to slide into the necks of the bottles prior to disgorgement.
The Tasting
We began with three wines, from 1983, ’89 and ’92, all disgorged on the same day in December 2018, all with 8g/l dosage and served from magnum. We then moved on to that spectacular 1918 magnum, which was disgorged in 1969, before finishing with a tasting of the 2008 which we could also appreciate over lunch, poured from the three formats. For me, the 2008 from magnum had more sense of depth and sumptuousness, but really vibrant fruit; obviously the same wine as in bottle, but the expressive dial notched up just half a point. The jeroboam (double magnum) was fabulous again, a little tighter and more obviously youthful in character, a nutty reductive note apparent, but with mesmerising, streaking freshness.
The Wines
Champagne Bollinger, Vintage 1918
Champagne, France, Sparkling White, Cork, 12.0% abv
Bollinger 1918. What a story Tom and what an experience!
Indeed David. Believe or not, I’ve also been lucky enough to taste the 1914 Pol Roger – “harvested to the sound of cannon fire; drunk to the sound of victory trumpets,” was how the winemaker described it.