Bollinger

Bollinger was founded on 6 February 1829 in Aÿ by Athanase de Villermont, Joseph Bollinger, and Paul Renaudin. Nearly two centuries on, it is one of the last remaining great family-owned Champagne houses, still held through Société Jacques Bollinger (SJB). Étienne Bizot is chairman and CEO of the group; Charles-Armand de Belenet runs the Champagne house day-to-day. The Hennequin family connection goes back to 1585, which is the kind of lineage that allows Bollinger to say "independent" with a straight face even at roughly three million bottles a year.

Headquartered in Aÿ (Grand Cru, Vallée de la Marne). The house owns around 178 hectares of vineyards, of which 85% is Grand Cru or Premier Cru, farmed across seven distinct zones: Aÿ, Avenay, Tauxières, Louvois, and Verzenay for Pinot Noir; Cuis for Chardonnay; Champvoisy for Meunier. Pinot Noir is the backbone at around sixty percent. About two-thirds of the house's fruit is estate-grown, which in Grande Marque terms is unusually high.

Two Bollinger distinctions matter more than the corporate history. The first is the cooperage. Bollinger is the only Champagne house with its own resident cooper - the cooperage maintains around four thousand barrels in which reserve wines and the top cuvées are fermented and aged, a practice almost entirely abandoned by the rest of the region mid-century. The second is the library: magnum-bottled reserve wines are kept under natural cork rather than crown cap, which gives a different rate of evolution and is the structural reason La Grande Année and R.D. taste the way they do.

The range:

• Special Cuvée - NV, the flagship, Pinot-dominant
• Rosé
• La Grande Année and La Grande Année Rosé - vintage
• R.D. ("Récemment Dégorgé") - late-disgorged La Grande Année, minimum eight years on lees, often much more
• PN series - single-vintage blends focused on specific Pinot Noir terroirs (PN AYC, PN VZ, etc.)
• Vieilles Vignes Françaises - the legendary bottling from two tiny ungrafted, pre-phylloxera Pinot Noir plots in Aÿ: Clos Saint-Jacques and Chaudes Terres. Farmed by hand, propagated by provignage (layering the vines themselves rather than grafting rootstock). A few hundred cases a year. It is one of the few things in Champagne that actually earns its mythology.

SJB also owns Ayala, Maison Chanson (Burgundy), Langlois-Chateau (Loire), and Delamain Cognac. Bollinger has been the official 007 Champagne since 1973, and the Royal Warrant has been renewed continuously since 1884.