Brand story
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.
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- Brand story
Maison Bollinger, a most singular taste to be shared
Champagne Bollinger is a Grande Maison that remains one of the leading family-owned and operated wineries in the Champagne region. For almost two centuries, Champagne Bollinger has been dedicated to producing unique, fine wines and has preserved its exceptional quality.
Since its foundation in 1829, the spirit of craftsmanship has been handed down with the utmost care. The vineyards of the Maison are blessed with vast and spectacular soils, where elegant and dynamic Pinot Noir is nurtured. This uncompromising excellence was honored to be first awarded a Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria in 1884. Since then, it has made a name for itself as one of the few Champagne houses to be the official suppliers for the British Royal Family.
The Bollinger style is characterised by the expression of the fruit’s full palette of aromas in champagnes that are both deep and subtle and which strike a perfect balance between the intensity of great Pinot Noirs and the freshness of Chardonnays from the Côte des Blancs.
Bollinger wines reveal a creamy effervescence resulting from vinification in oak barrels and prolonged yeast contact.
Bollinger style 5 key pillars
The five pillars are the key to the authentic craftsmanship and the insatiable passion for winemaking that the Maison continues to uphold.
The House Vineyard
Exceptional vineyards built
by generation after generation
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.
Pinot Noir
The backbone of
Champagne Bollinger
Pinot noir is above all a demanding grape: it is fragile, requiring care at every step, and the wines it produces take a very long time to age. Yet Bollinger has built its reputation by showcasing this variety because of the incomparable finesse that pinot noir can bring to a wine.
Today, the pinot noir planted around the Montagne de Reims represents over 60% of the Bollinger vineyards. This also just happens to be the exact proportion it occupies in the Special Cuvée blend! Pinot noir surprises with its multiple facets and, when vinified well, the finesse of its bouquet is revealed. Its unusually high proportion in the blends is a signature of the Bollinger style, to which it lends power, body and vinosity. It has been one of the founding principles of Champagne Bollinger’s identity from the very beginning.
The barrels
The Champagne region’s last resident cooper
Entering the Bollinger cooper’s workshop (the last resident cooper of the Champagne region) is like stepping back through time. His neatly organised tools hark back to another age. Cooperage is a highly skilled craft: each one of Bollinger’s 4,000 aged barrels, of which some are nearly 100 years old, requires great attention. Learning to maintain this legacy in perfect condition requires rigorous training, which is why cooperage is a craft that must be passed on to younger generations. Bollinger attaches great importance to preserving this valuable expertise.
Magnums of reserve wines
The art of reserve
Champagne Bollinger keeps part of its reserve wines in magnums.
Every year, a portion of the best wines joins the exceptional collection of 1 million reserve magnums destined for the Special Cuvée and Bollinger Rosé blends.
This method is unique in Champagne, with its use at Bollinger documented since 1890, and is one of the great style markers of the house.
These “aromatic bombs” contribute to the complexity of the non-vintage blends and their consistency over time.
The luxury of time
The luxury of time
Only by descending into the subterranean world of the cellars can we fully grasp the importance of time at Bollinger. Firstly, all the wines are left to age on the lees for twice or three times as long as stipulated by the Champagne appellation, so that the wine can develop and gain in complexity. It is this long rest that gives that rare delicate quality to the aromas and a velvety texture to the bubbles.
This notion of time does not stop here. At Bollinger we let nature run its course; if the harvest does not reach vintage standards, we wait until the following year or even the year after that, so that quality always prevails over quantity. To take this idea even further, only the La Grande Année vintages with exceptional ageing potential will be left several years longer in the cellars, to become the famous Bollinger R.D. cuvées, delighting the taste buds of the most exacting tasters.
Madame Bollinger The soul of Champagne Bollinger since 80 years
Elisabeth Bollinger
Champagne Bollinger obtains
B CorpTM certification.
Maison Bollinger obtained B CorpTM certification, an international certification which represents high standards in terms of social, societal, and environmental performance and it allows us to join a community of businesses who are committed to the ambitious development of these values., Maison Bollinger maintains its ongoing commitment to People, to the Land, and to its Roots as well as our continued efforts towards further progress.