Browse Tag

bollinger

Bolly good

Bollinger Champagne Brut “Special Cuvée” (Champagne) – Not sure of the “vintage” of this non-vintage, but it’s at least four, and probably more, years past release. It’s good, of course, with weighty, dark fruit and a gloomy neutron star concentration of light and darkness in tandem, but I realize as I drink it that I hardly ever drink Champagnes in this style anymore. I don’t know that my tastes have changed as much as the context in which I explore those tastes has changed; the reasons I used to like Bollinger still apply here, and yet I think I’m more interested in other directions and diversions in bubbly these days. The lusciousness that I love gets, by the last glass, a bit more tedious than I think I would have found it a decade ago, and I think it’s both the style and the short-term age that even this bottling can definitely absorb. (9/11)

Don’t louse it up

Bollinger 1992 Champagne Blanc de Noirs Brut “Vieilles Vignes Françaises” (Champagne) – God drinks this, but he saves it for the special occasions. Pure liquid brilliance, a perfect wine, and unimaginably beautiful. There’s restrained power, there’s incomparable elegance, there’s force and there’s delicacy. It’s a gentle breeze, it’s a typhoon, it’s a gently-flowing stream, it’s a waterfall. Berries? Yes: dark and moody. But also Perigord truffle, and artisan croissant, and the finest fleur de sel. Mostly, though, there’s light and shadow…flickering, flickering. Entire religions were founded on less. (8/07)