Champagne La Grande Anne Rosè Bollinger Vintage 2007

1829 : an adventurous aristocrat and two experts in wine

The story began with Athanase de Villermont, the youngest son of a noble family with a brilliant destiny. A great soldier who shone during the American War of Independence, he inherited an extensive estate from his family in the Aÿ area. He immediately foresaw the extraordinary potential of the wines of Champagne, but as an aristocrat he was forbidden to become involved in trade. He then met Joseph Bollinger, a widely travelled German who had left his country of birth to learn about the Champagne wine trade, and Paul Renaudin, a local man who was fascinated by the world of wine. The firm of Renaudin-Bollinger & Cie was founded on 6th February 1829. Joseph took care of sales and Paul of the cellar. Athanase had founded a champagne House that was to endure through the centuries.

As its name suggests, La Grande Année Rosé is a variant of La Grande Année.

The blend is created by combining La Grande Année with red wine from “La Côte aux Enfants,” a vineyard less than 1.5 acres in size, in the heart of Champagne’s Aÿ terroir.

La Grande Année Rosé is named after the plot of land it comes from and is made in a true burgundian style.

This wine is not produced every year, as perfect maturity is required at the date of harvest.

Thus, La Grande Année Rosé vintage 2007 remains an exception; it is a beautifully structured and full-bodied wine, with a deep color and intense aroma.

Bollinger’s exceptional vineyard

The House’s 170 hectares are planted with 85% of Grand Cru and Premier Cru vines, spread over seven main vineyards: Aÿ, Avenay, Tauxières, Louvois et Verzenay are planted with Pinot Noir, Cuis with Chardonnay and Champvoisy with Pinot Meunier. Bollinger is one of a very few champagne Houses to produce the majority of their own grapes for their blends. Pinot Noir represents 60% of the House’s vineyard, corresponding to the exact proportion of this demanding grape variety in the Special Cuvée blend. Complex and powerful, it provides Bollinger wines with their remarkable structure. Another of Bollinger’s distinctive features are two plots, the Clos Saint-Jacques and Chaudes Terres, which have never succumbed to phylloxera, the disease which ravaged almost all of the champagne wine-growing area in the early 20th century.

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.

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