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Premiere – 2007 Bollinger ‘R.D.’

Richard Juhlin

Richard Juhlin

It’s always great tasting new releases – 2007 Bollinger ‘R.D.’. Bollinger – one of the few perfect champagne houses and a beautiful gift to mankind.

2007 Bollinger ‘R.D.’

TASTING NOTE ‘2007 is in most hands a weak and diluted vintage that I normally avoid. The exception is spelled Bollinger! The powerful house style often shines brighter during lighter vintages than the years when the heat dominates and creates inflated fruit bombs. Bollinger ‘Vieilles Vignes Françaises’ stands in a class of its own, but then the vintage wines from Bollinger are top on my list from 2007.

The wine was already like ‘La Grande Année’ classically built and balanced with good depth and tightly beautiful malic acids. Now in the ‘R.D.’ version, the minerality is even clearer with macadam, chalk and gunpowder smoke. The champagne is extremely slim with a slightly buttery vanilla-like note as the top layer on above the dry notes of cocoa, hazelnut cream, dried apricots, blood orange and red juicy apples. The taste has a lighter mouthfeel than usual and significantly less of forest mushrooms, wood and spices than in most vintages of this heroic wine. An unusually fine-tuned classic that would fit perfectly in a romantic bedroom scene in the next Bond movie.’

94(95)p

The R.D. History

In 1963, the first bottles of what was to become the legendary Bollinger ‘R.D.’ appeared on the market. Madame Bollinger decided, in agreement with the House’s New York-based agent to release a limited quantity of bottles of “Réserve 1947” in the United States. The intention was to “create some competition for the special bottles”, in other words “Prestige cuvées” that other Champagne Houses were putting on the market at the time.

Madame Bollinger’s great idea was to choose an older vintage that was disgorged late and prepared like an Extra Brut. This was a daring move at a time when aged Champagnes were not fashionable, but the House put into practice the strong intuitive belief that the oxidative stress of disgorging would give great freshness to the future Bollinger ‘R.D.’

In 1967, after much hesitation concerning the final name of the cuvée (Late Disgorged, Late Disgorged Reserve), Bollinger ‘R.D.’, standing for Recently Disgorged was chosen.

Three vintages were launched simultaneously. The 1952 vintage in the British market, the 1953 in the Swiss and French markets and the 1955 in the US and Italian markets. It was this vintage followed by that of 1959 which really gained international renown for Bollinger ‘R.D.’.

source: Bollinger.com

R.D. & Gastronomy

Bollinger R.D. will enhance all great gastronomic moments. R.D. marries perfectly with the most refined dishes, such as pigeon cooked pink or roasted scallops. The intensity of the wine makes it the perfect partner for an aged Gruyère or Comté.

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