What makes Bollinger Special Cuvée special?

A masterclass in London last month looked closely at what makes Champagne Bollinger’s Brut NV – known as Special Cuvée – so special.

What makes Bollinger Special Cuvée ‘special’?

As previously reported by the drinks business, Bollinger is putting a fresh emphasis on its wine credentials after last year’s focus on the brand’s association with James Bond, and, as part of this, held an event in May to dissect the components of its best-selling line: Special Cuvée.

Bollinger president Jérôme Philippon explained, “It is so important to share with our partners why is it different, why it so special, why it is called Special Cuvée, and dissect what makes it special.”

To do this, Philippon said that the house has spent the past five years analysing the wine, adding, “Because it is indeed special: it is one of the most successful non-vintage Champagnes.”

Consequently, the house has attributed its stylistic and qualitative difference to “five pillars”, according to Bollinger cellar master Giles Decôtes, which, having attended the masterclass, we have outlined below.

1. The vineyard
Bollinger owns more than 167 hectares (up from 165ha in 2014) which is enough to supply at least 60% of the brand’s needs, an unusually high proportion – the average Champagne house owns enough land to supply 10% of its production, according to Decôtes.

This is important, he said, because it gives the winemaking team “consistency” – it can control the management and harvesting of the vineyards, while the location of the grapes is the same every year.

2. Pinot Noir
As much as 60% of Bollinger’s vineyards are planted with Pinot Noir, and that ensures that no Champagne from the house contains less than 60% of this red grape, stated Decôtes. This ensures that Bollinger “is the house of Pinot Noir”.

3. Oak barrels
Bollinger own as makes as 3,500 barrels which means that the equivalent of one million bottles go through fermentation in oak annually. “There is no other company in Champagne – except maybe Krug – that has so many barrels,” said Decôtes.

4. Reserve wine
Uniquely, Bollinger has a significant store of reserve wine in magnums – rather than stainless steel vats or large oak casks. “This is definitely a huge difference,” stressed Decôtes, adding, “Right now we have more than 750,000 reserve magnums stored village by village, year by year.”

5. Time
“Our fifth pillar is time,” said Decôtes, noting that Bollinger ages its Champagnes, including Special Cuvée for two times as long as the average across the region. “Champagne sells around 300m bottles per year and the total stock is around 1 billion bottles, so around 3 years worth of stock, but we have more than 6 years of stock at Bollinger, so double the average.” Continuing he said, “Time is important for the style of the wine.”

Then, Decôtes explained what makes up “the Bollinger taste”, which he has reduced to three key aspects, noting that his role as cellar master is “to reach the Bollinger taste of Special Cuvée every year”. These are as follows:

1. Fruit
“The first taste [for Special Cuvée] is about fruit, and fruit in all its stages: fresh fruit coming from the wine from the previous harvest; then ripe mature stewed fruit from the reserve wines that we store in vats, and then a third layer, which is dried fruit like dried apricots that we get from the reserve wine stored in magnum,” explained Decôtes.

2. Vinosity
“Then we decided to use the term ‘vinosity’ – although we say ‘deep and subtle’ to describe this,” said Decôtes. “‘Deep’ because of the 60% of Pinot Noir – and our philosophy is to get Pinot Noir from the best places and very ripe Pinot Noir.” As for ‘subtle’, this comes from 25% Chardonnay used in Special Cuvée, 90% of which comes from premier and grand cru vineyards in the Côtes des Blancs. “This brings this subtlety to our blend; we forgot to talk about Chardonnay for a while at Bollinger, but this has a big place in Special Cuvée,” he said.

3. Creamy effervescence
“The third and last item is the creamy effervescence: this creaminess is different from other wines,” said Decôtes. This sensation comes from the three years Bollinger Special Cuvée spends ageing in contact with yeast. He explained, “All houses have ageing on lees [in bottle], but at Bollinger, we have lees contact with our wines ageing in magnums, and our wines in barrels, because we rack the wines after the malo-lactic fermentation and then we put the wines back into the barrels and age them on the fine lees for 4-5 months. So that means we have contact with the lees three times, which gives extra creaminess.”