The Same Wine, Released Twice

La Grande Année is Bollinger’s vintage Champagne and the house’s argument in a bottle: Pinot Noir-led, fermented entirely in old oak barrels, aged on its lees for years longer than the appellation requires, and released only in years the house considers worth declaring. The 2002 was sixty percent Pinot Noir and forty percent Chardonnay, drawn almost entirely from grand cru villages with the remainder from premiers crus, and disgorged around 2011 after the better part of a decade on the yeast.

The same base wine has a second life. R.D. — récemment dégorgé — is La Grande Année held back in the cellar, kept on its lees for years more, and disgorged shortly before release. The two are, in the most literal sense, the same wine at different points on the same timeline. The R.D. 2002 had been opened a few months earlier; this was the original.

The Year

2002 was one of Champagne’s great modern vintages — a warm, dry September that ripened the fruit fully and concentrated it, giving wines of unusual richness that also kept their acidity. Pinot Noir did particularly well, which for a Pinot-led house is most of the story.

In the Glass

Opened at a restaurant counter as the Champagne in a four-bottle evening alongside the Cos d’Estournel 1975 and 1994 and a Liger-Belair Aux Reignots 2015. Eighteen years from the vintage, roughly a decade from disgorgement.

Deep gold, with a fine and persistent bead. The nose was rich and developed — baked apple and quince, toasted brioche, hazelnut, honey and a smoky, oxidative edge from the barrel fermentation that is the house’s fingerprint. Beneath it a floral lift and a chalky minerality.

On the palate it was full and vinous, with the Pinot Noir weight through the middle and an acidity that had softened over the decade in bottle but was still doing its work. The mousse was creamy rather than sharp. The finish was long, on toast and dried fruit and a faint bitter-almond grip.

Against the memory of the R.D., the difference was legible: the same depth and the same house character, but this bottle had done its ageing after disgorgement rather than before — rounder, more evolved, a little less taut. Two releases of one wine, and neither the lesser for it.