🍾 Bollinger La Grande Année Rosé 2018

Bollinger La Grande Année Rosé 2018 is the 2018 release of La Grande Année Rosé by the house Bollinger, a vintage rosé Champagne in the Brut style.

According to the house, the blend draws on 19 crus, fermentation takes place entirely in barrels, and the wine is aged under cork for more than twice as long as the appellation rules require; the dosage is 7 g/l. According to the house, 5 % red wine from the Côte aux Enfants plot in Aÿ is added to the blend.

The house Bollinger is based in Aÿ (Marne); it was founded in 1829 and, according to the house, is family-owned and focused on Pinot Noir.

The boundaries of the Champagne area were set by a law of 6 May 1919: parts of the Marne, Aube, Aisne, Haute-Marne and Seine-et-Marne departments. The designation’s specification allows seven grape varieties, dominated by Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier; grapes are picked as whole bunches, that is by hand, and the yield is limited to 10,400 kg per hectare.

According to the Comité Champagne, Champagne is served chilled to 8–10 °C, and bottles are kept in the dark at a steady 10–15 °C, without vibration. An opened bottle is best closed with a sparkling-wine stopper and kept cold.

It is sold under the protected designation of origin Champagne: the bubbles come only from a second fermentation in the bottle, and the wine is aged for at least 15 months before sale (36 for vintage). Brut on the label is an EU sugar term: less than 12 g of sugar per litre.

Why it matters to you. The year on the label is the harvest year, so different years of the same line are different wines. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.