Since 1829, six generations of the Bollinger family have crafted a dry, long-lived, and toasty style of Champagne that has come to define this great house. With nearly 400 acres of vineyards spread across Champagne – almost entirely in Grand Cru and Premier Cru villages – Bollinger is perhaps unique among Champagne’s larger maisons for growing over two-thirds of all the fruit needed to make their cuvees. Pinot Noir is the favored grape to lead their blends, and this PN VZ19 is their penultimate expression of their top plots of Pinot Noir.

Forty percent of the fruit hails from Grand Cru plots in Verzenay – one of the most famous villages in Champagne, in the Montagne de Reims, where Pinot Noir is revered for its production of powerful and full-bodied expressions of Champagne. The winemaking style of Bollinger is traditional, with a focus on barrel fermentations driving that voluptuously spiced Bollinger style. In fact, they are the last of the Grand Marques to employ a full-time cooper – a nod to the importance they place on barrel influence in their final wines. 

With 48% reserve wines dating back to 2009, this profound and opulent bubbly is finished with a precise Brut-level dosage. The most recent disgorgement, completed in January of last year, just landed a couple weeks back to the USA, and I can’t stress this enough – this is a collectible and showstopping bottling for any Champagne aficionado to cherish. Opening aromas of grilled peaches and ripe cherries, followed by toasty and rich praline sensations pull you into the glass, followed tautly wound flavors of mandarin, raspberry, and pear with hints of orange zest, Marcona almonds, white pepper, and delicate chantilly cream. This is heady, precise, and opulent stuff – a collectible bottling of Bollinger if ever there was one!