Not everyone can boast that they were able to go to a Bollinger Vins Clairs & Reserve Wines tasting through their work, but I along with 39 other Majestic Wine employees can! And what a great thing to boast about! You can keep your extra holiday, company car and flexi-time as I am one employee who cannot believe the opportunities open to a mere assistant manager!
We all gathered in the lower part of a lovely restaurant in central London for this very special tasting that I was far to excited about, not only because of the rare chance to taste the Vins Clairs and Reserve Wines but also because I got to try Bollinger red wine and their Bollinger Rosé NV champagne. I make no qualms about the fact that I am a Bollinger lover and their Special Cuvée NV is a personal favourite of mine, as it the Bollinger Grande Année (buy this as a perfect gift here), so the chance to not only try the wines that create such amazing champagnes but also mix the red wine with the Special Cuvée was a chance that I was not going to miss!
Firstly a little bit of Bollinger House history, this is a family owned company, 3 families merged and they are one of only a few champagne houses which own their own vineyards, most of which are either Premier cru or Grand cru status. Bollinger pride themselves on their ability to blend, and boy do they do this well!
They still ferment their champagne in the barrel as they did 100 years ago and do not replace the barrels, but repair them and the barrels will be approximately 120 years old! Grand and Premier cru site fruit generally are barrel fermented unless they do not meet Bollinger’s high standards, in which case they will be tank fermented. 2001 was a bad harvest for this wine and only 700 barrels out of 3000 were used as the house would not use a below standard raw material. 2003 was a one off vintage and the Champagne house showed how much they concentrate on blending and on how important raw materials are as they made a reserve wine first from this vintage. The Reserve wines are called “aroma bombs” by the Bollinger house. The blend of the Vins Clairs and Reserve wine is far more important than the single parts. Bollinger concentrate on their reserve wines first, as they believe a good champagne cannot be made without a good base. They make these wines from Grand and Premier cru sites which they own and put in magnum with a little dose, approximately a quarter, of yeast and sugar to prevent against natural secondary fermentation. These wines can then be in the cellar for 10 - 15 years. They currently have approximately 600,000 magnums of this wine in the cellars and each one will be hand opened, there is a distinct chance of RSI here I think!
We started the evening by trying Vins Clairs, Avize which was a tank sample and offers the elegance and softness which the resulting champagne shows in abundance. This wine is high in acid and is blanc de blanc, meaning only white grapes were used, from the 2008 vintage. This was swiftly followed by Vins Clairs, Mesnil which was barrel fermented and then Vins Clairs, Venteuil, again another tank sample. The Vins Clairs Ventueil brings the fruit and freshness to the champagne. I could have actually had a glass of both the Vins Clairs, Avize and Vins Clairs Ventueil as they both had characteristics of the overall champagne in and were actually a pleasant surprise as I had expected rather harsh wines that bore little resemblance to the end product. We also tried Vins Clairs, Ay both tank and barrel samples. This wine is a long lasting and slow developing which creates a creamy texture for the champagne. Finally before trying the Special Cuvée NV I tried the Reserve Wine, Mesnil 2003! This was not expressive and only equates to 10% of the overall champagne. It is not sparkling nor still and can be seen as a raw material.
The Bollinger Special Cuvée NV was, as I knew it would be, was amazing! I love the champagne and the bottle we tried was made up of 45% of the most recent harvest (2005) and 45% of the previous harvest (2004) and then 10% of the reserve wines from magnum. Therefore this is multi vintage and 10-20 years of wine is being blended together to create a great champagne. We then had the opportunity to blend our own Bollinger Rosé NV. We were able to try the Red wine 2004 from Ay, and I have to say I was impressed! I could have quite easily sipped the red wine all night. This vintage was added to the Grande Année 2004 vintage as 100% of the raw materials have to be from the same vintage. Bollinger use a young red wine to keep the freshness. To create the Bollinger Rosé properly the Bollinger house add 5-6% of the red wine to the Special Cuvée.
I would buy the Special Cuvée, Grande Année and Rosé just to try them if you have yet to do so. This is one champagne house that may be small but has a lot going for it and should be appreciated by all champagne lovers. To give a great gift to someone, whether it be the Bollinger Special Cuvée NV, Bollinger Rosé NV, or Bollinger Grande Année 2000 and guarentee a friend for life click here. Majestic’s own Richard Hook who is the Sanderstead Store Manager wrote an article about his trip to the Bollinger Champagne House in April 2009, to read this click here.
