Bollinger Rose NV Champagne《Terroir Collection - ZTF048》

Region : Champagne, France

Grapes : 62% Pinot Noir, 24% Chardonnay, 14% Pinot Meunier 

Alcohol : 12%

Official Website : https://www.champagne-bollinger.com/en/

🌟 One of the most famous Champagne

🌟 Selected by British Royal from 1884 

🌟 Signature Champagne of James Bond 

🌟 Produced a perfect score Champagne of WA

🌟 85% Grand Cru/Premier Cru Grapes, with an addition of 5 to 6% red wine

🏅 James Suckling 93 (23 Nov, 2021)

🏅 Wine Advocate 92 (Aug 31, 2022)

Since 1829, Champagne Bollinger has been making great wines with a powerful, refined and complex style, expressing the aromas of the fruit in all its dimensions.

This truly unique taste is the result of a particular affinity for the elegance of pinot noir, uncompromising excellence, an exceptional vineyard and traditional craftsmanship handed down through the generations with the utmost care since 1829.

The Bollinger style is inimitable and recognised as such by great connoisseurs, the fruit of rigorous methods and a respect for principles handed down from one generation to the next in a great tradition that has always valued experience above all. This style expresses the aromas of the fruit in all its dimensions. The Bollinger style has a dense and subtle presence, a balance of the intensity of great pinot noirs and the freshness of chardonnays from the Côte des Blancs. Bollinger wines release a creamy effervescence resulting from vinifying in oak barrels and prolonged contact with the yeasts. They guarantee a unique tasting experience that always offers something new. This style stems from a solid base, rooted in 5 tangible principles: the House Vineyards; pinot noir; magnums of reserve wines; the barrels and time.

Over the years, Bollinger has built its vineyards at the heart of the finest crus in Champagne. Champagne Bollinger’s 180 hectares of vines are made up of 85% Grand and Premier crus and are farmed by our teams of growers across 7 separate vineyards: Aÿ, Avenay, Tauxières, Louvois and Verzenay for pinot noir, around the Montagne de Reims, Cuis for chardonnay on the Côte des Blancs and Champvoisy for meunier in the Vallée de la Marne.

Another of Bollinger’s distinctive features are two plots, the Clos Saint-Jacques and Chaudes Terres, which have never succumbed to phylloxera. These ungrafted vines are entirely tended by hand and reproduced using a form of layering called provignage, thereby providing the means to preserve this extraordinary heritage from which the very exclusive Vieilles Vignes Françaises cuvée is produced.

Stainless steel offers the advantage of preserving all the personality of a wine, due to its material and the fact that it is entirely sealed. Wood brings a different philosophy, based on exchange. Oak is a living substance and is slightly porous, which plays an important role in oxygenating the precious wines. Air, which is required in order for the flavours to flourish, circulates in very small quantities through the fibre of the wood. This slight and constant oxygenation helps soften the tannin, and control the acidity of the wine. The aromatic complexity of the champagne is therefore naturally more developed than if vinified in stainless steel.

Since 1829, Champagne Bollinger has always vinified its best crus in oak barrels. This is not something likely to change any time soon: Bollinger owns the largest collection of barrels in Champagne, with 4,000 units including “fûts” and “pipes”, some of which are over a hundred years old. This is a treasure that we care for to ensure its longevity, because using new barrels that would alter the aromas of the precious wines is out of the question. Each barrel comes from Burgundy, where it lived a former life.

“We only use second-hand barrels from Burgundy, where they have already vinified chardonnays, thereby avoiding the taste of new barrel.”

Every year, some of the best wines from the latest harvest are kept back. Some of our reserve wines are stored in magnums; Bollinger bottles some of them, vineyard by vineyard, year by year. They then join the more than 1 million reserve magnums that have been ageing in the cellars for five, ten, twelve or more years.

These wines held in magnum encapsulate a unique process: The bottles are sealed with a cork stopper and wire cage before being taken down to the cellar for the secondary fermentation or "prise de mousse" to occur. This “micro-champagnisation” helps stabilise the aromas of the wines for all the years they will spend in the cellar, patiently waiting to be used. This reserve allows the Cellar Master to make the most of this rich palette of aromas when it comes to blending. Explosive, yet subtle and precise, these aromatic bombs, unique in Champagne, lend Bollinger wines their incomparable character and their constant quality year after year.

When Champagne Bollinger decided to embark on making a rosé, its standards were uncompromising: it had to have freshness, of course, but also structure and elegance. Bollinger Rosé therefore falls within the same vein as Special Cuvée, with its spiced notes.

The addition of a superb red wine from the Poirier Saint-Pierre and Montboeuf plots in Verzenay or the ones in Aÿ, worked in the same way as the vines of the legendary Côte aux Enfants plot, lends it an assertive aromatic power. It also boasts a brilliance, presence and delicate quality that are the hallmark of great blends.

Bollinger Rosé is an assembly of over 85% Grand and Premier crus. It is made up of 62% Pinot Noir, 24% Chardonnay and 14% Meunier. The red wine acts as an agent of style, with an addition of just 5 to 6% given its power.

🏅 James Suckling 93 points

23 Nov, 2021 – Deep red-berry nose, plus some nectarine, spice and candied-orange notes. Powerful and fresh, the hint of tannin from the red-wine component of the blend neatly balanced by the creaminess. Excellent textural complexity, then a long, delicately spicy and mineral finish. Disgorged in June 2021. Drink now.

🏅 Wine Advocate 92 points

The latest release of Bollinger's NV Brut Rosé is showing especially well, offering up complex aromas of sweet stone fruit, honeycomb, freshly baked bread and orange oil, followed by a medium to full-bodied, pillowy and vinous palate. Layered and concentrated, with a pretty pinpoint mousse and ripe but racy acids, it concludes with a long, expansive finish.

Published: Aug 31, 2022

$488/bottle