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News
Bollinger is to auction a 102-year-old bottle of 1914 Champagne at Sotheby’s in New York, part of a 600-strong collection of vintage cuvées discovered in a secret room within its labyrinth of cellars.
In 2010 Bollinger staff were clearing out their cellars in Aÿ when a rack of wines was removed from a darkened arch. Behind it the team was astonished to find a hidden room which had remained untouched and hidden for decades, containing around...
Wine Description
The Story
The underground world of the House’s cellars reveals the full importance of time at Bollinger’s. After primary fermentation in small stainless steel or wooden casks the wine is bottled in the spring and taken down to rest in the pervading silence of the chalk cellars; Special Cuvée champagne will remain there for at least three years and vintage cuvees for much longer. It is this long period of rest that develops the extraordinarily delicate a...
Wine Information
The final wine in our tasting was from 1914. “This was harvested by women and children,” Descôtes said, as the men of Ay had been mobilized for the start of World War I. The wine was amazingly fresh, like a fine Sauternes with a slight effervescence. (Champagne was sweeter back then.) More than any particular flavor, I tasted the anticipation and dread of a doomed generation, from a time when the Marne was still a river and not yet a battle, w...
