Product Description
Varieties
65% Pinot Noir
35% Chardonnay
The Vineyard
21 crus: Mainly Aÿ and Verzenay for the Pinot Noir, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oiry for the Chardonnay.
5% red Côte aux Enfants wine.
Exclusive use of the cuvée.
The Cellar
Fermented entirely in barrels.
At Bollinger, only very high quality harvests become a vintage: the exceptional 2012 vintage led to Bollinger creating expressive wines that were simultaneously full, fresh and complex.
Maturation – Sealed with a natural cork and cellar aged for more than twice the time required by the appellation.
Gilles Descôtes is Bollinger’s Cellar Master. This profession requires the utmost accuracy from the moment the harvest is over he monitors the wines from each cru and each plot, getting the feel of their specific characteristics. He chooses the finest wines to be vinified in old oak casks, a practice which has almost disappeared in champagne production. The micro-oxygenation process delicately reveals the wines’ complexity and gives them an extraordinary capacity for aging. With patience and thoroughness the Cellar Master prepares each wine for the Tasting Committee when the moment comes to assemble the year’s blend. He also adds carefully preserved reserve wines, which provide an almost infinite palette of nuances and character. The Cellar Master must not simply be talented; he must also be highly intuitive in order to sense how wines will develop so that today’s blend will achieve perfection in the future.
Dosage – Moderate, 8 grammes per litre
