2004 Bollinger La Grande Annee 750 ml

Lily Bollinger: “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad… Otherwise, I never touch it — unless I’m thirsty.”

In 1918, Jacques Bollinger assumed control of this family’s Champagne empire. Not long after, he married Elisabeth Law de Lauriston-Boubers, better known in the region as “Lily.” Quick-witted and always good for a memorable one-liner, Lily Bollinger said: “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it — unless I’m thirsty.”

After 20 years at the helm of Champagne Bollinger, Lily’s imagination was as vivid as ever. In 1961, she served a 1952 Champagne to a group of collector friends, each of whom marveled at the freshness of the nine-year-old wine. Then she unveiled her winemaking secret. The 1952 had been resting in the frigid Bollinger cellars for almost eight years before Lily instructed her cellarmaster to perform a novel technique.

For hundreds of years, “riddlers” worked in deep, dark limestone cellars, rotating bottles 1/8 of a turn on racks where the bottles were resting upside down. “Riddling” forced dead yeast cells to the neck of the bottle where they would be subsequently “disgorged,” a process that called for freezing the neck of the bottle in an ice-salt bath, removing the cap and allowing the wine’s carbon dioxide to pop out the frozen plug. Cellar masters then topped off bottles with a sugary mix of white wine and brandy, before laying the wine down for 3-5 years before release.

Lily Bollinger had been tasting older bottles for over three decades, and as much as she enjoyed the complexities of aged Champagne, she wasn’t fond of the bitter, oxidative aromas that came into play. In the mid-1950s, she decided to conduct an experiment, instructing the Bollinger team to age the extraordinary 1952 La Grande Année for eight years before popping the plug and refreshing the aged Champagne. In 1961, at the unveiling of the 1952 R.D. (“recently disgorged” in 1960), this nine-year-old Champagne was infused with the aromatic complexity that comes with age, as well as bright honey and citronelle of youth.

Today, Bollinger La Grande Année joins Dom Pérignon, Roederer Cristal, and Salon as the most sought-after Champagne in the world. Rightfully so. Produced only in great vintages, and particularly when very recently disgorged, La Grande Année is extraordinarily rich, terrifically complex (in many ways, much like a slightly effervescent Premier Cru Meursault), yet refreshing and vibrant, showing little or no sign of its 8-10 years of bottle age.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, two Champagne vintages are most remarkable — 2009 and 2004. The assemblage of the 2009 La Grande Année has yet to be determined. As to last September’s disgorgement of the 2004 La Grande Année, tasted out of Zalto flutes in NYC last week, this is a staggering Champagne that reminds us why Lily Bollinger was so rarely thirsty!

95 points from Antonio Galloni. 94 more from Parker’s Wine Advocate. Just 15 cases of the September 2015 disgorgement have been earmarked for WineAccess. Shipping included on 3.