Bollinger La Grande Annee Brut 2000
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La Grande Année is the Prestige Cuvée of Champagne Bollinger.It is only produced when exceptional quality harvests occur, and is the expression of Bollinger's know-how.More than the illustration of the vintage particularity, La Grande Année is the result of the Bollinger style,of its exceptional "terroir" and traditional wine making techniques.La Grande Année develops a beautiful rounded structure and combines rich, complex and intense aromas,the expression of which changes according to the characteristics of the vintage.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Full, creamy and soft, this is a rich Champagne, very much a food wine. It has great ripe swathes of peach and pineapple flavors, rounded by toast. While 2000 is not a vintage for aging, this opulent Champagne may be the exception.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2000 Brut La Grande Annee is a ripe, open wine bursting with generous, expansive fruit. Smoke, minerals, pastry crust and flowers add complexity to the radiant fruit. The Grande Annee reveals gorgeous depth and a multi-dimensional, kaleidoscopic personality that screams of pure breed. The 2000 will be a fascinating vintage to follow. I am not sure it has the freshness to be an extremely long-lived wine, but it does a fabulous job in capturing the Bollinger house style. The 2000 Grande Annee is 63% Pinot Noir, 37% Chardonnay of which 76% is Grand Cru and 24% is Premier Cru. This is Lot L911736. Disgorged January 19, 2009. Anticipated maturity: 2010-2020.
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Wine Spectator
A full, robust Champagne, delivering plenty of gingerbread, toast and citrus aromas and flavors. Balanced in an extroverted way, with a fine texture, this is approachable now. Should continue to develop. Drink now through 2020.
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Wine & Spirits
Rounder and softer than a traditional Bollinger vintage, this 2000 is filled with citrus flavors and darker tones of toasted nuts. The richness of the wine suggests pairing it with salmon in a beurre noisette, or the milk-poached poussin at The Modern in NYC, served with linden flower sauce, wood ear mushroom compote and mustard greens.
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In 1829, Champagne Bollinger introduced an instantly recognizable, dry, toasty style that connoisseurs around the globe have coveted ever since. Six generations of the Bollinger family have maintained that trademark style, and Bollinger is one of the rare Grande Marque houses to be owned, controlled and managed by the same family since it was founded.
With 399 acres of vineyards situated in the best Grands Crus and Premiers Crus villages, Bollinger relies on its own estate for nearly two-thirds of its grape requirements, including the Pinot Noir that gives its Champagne its distinctive roundness and elegance. Bollinger is one of a select few houses that can control the quality of its grape supply so carefully.
Bollinger is renowned for its stringent quality standards. It adheres to traditional methods, including individual vinification of each marc and cru, barrel fermentation (it is the last Champagne house to employ a full-time cooper) and extra-aging on the lees prior to disgorgement.
Members of the British Royal Court were among the first to embrace Bollinger’s unmistakable quality, and Queen Victoria made Bollinger the exclusive purveyor to the Court by Royal Warrant in 1884. Besides royalty, loyal devotees have included heads of state, celebrities and even famous fictional characters: Agent 007, James Bond, demands the exclusive Champagne Bollinger.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Associated with luxury, celebration, and romance, the region, Champagne, is home to the world’s most prized sparkling wine. In order to bear the label, ‘Champagne’, a sparkling wine must originate from this northeastern region of France—called Champagne—and adhere to strict quality standards. Made up of the three towns Reims, Épernay, and Aÿ, it was here that the traditional method of sparkling wine production was both invented and perfected, birthing a winemaking technique as well as a flavor profile that is now emulated worldwide.
Well-drained, limestone and chalky soil defines much of the region, which lend a mineral component to its wines. Champagne’s cold, continental climate promotes ample acidity in its grapes but weather differences from year to year can create significant variation between vintages. While vintage Champagnes are produced in exceptional years, non-vintage cuvées are produced annually from a blend of several years in order to produce Champagnes that maintain a consistent house style.
With nearly negligible exceptions, . These can be blended together or bottled as individual varietal Champagnes, depending on the final style of wine desired. Chardonnay, the only white variety, contributes freshness, elegance, lively acidity and notes of citrus, orchard fruit and white flowers. Pinot Noir and its relative Pinot Meunier, provide the backbone to many blends, adding structure, body and supple red fruit flavors. Wines with a large proportion of Pinot Meunier will be ready to drink earlier, while Pinot Noir contributes to longevity. Whether it is white or rosé, most Champagne is made from a blend of red and white grapes—and uniquely, rosé is often produce by blending together red and white wine. A Champagne made exclusively from Chardonnay will be labeled as ‘blanc de blancs,’ while ones comprised of only red grapes are called ‘blanc de noirs.’