Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises: Nine Vintages

When phylloxera went through Champagne, it took almost everything. Two plots in Aÿ were never touched: Chaudes Terres, behind the Bollinger house, and Clos Saint-Jacques across from it. Together they come to 0.36 hectares. The vines there are ungrafted, growing on their own roots as every vine in Champagne did before the 1890s, and they are propagated by provignage — layering a cane into the soil until it roots and becomes the next vine. The work is done by hand, and in some years with a horse.

Those two plots make Vieilles Vignes Françaises, and nothing else does. Lily Bollinger had the first one made in 1969, for her seventieth birthday; it was released to the world in 1974. Until 2004 there was a third ungrafted plot, in Bouzy. It is gone.

Every bottle is numbered, because there are few enough to count. Recent vintages have run between roughly 1,800 and 3,200 bottles for the entire world, and the trend is downward as the ungrafted vines age and phylloxera slowly reaches them. How many more vintages there will be is an open question at the house itself.

This evening we open nine of them, from 2005 to 2014. Nine vintages of a wine that most people in the trade have never tasted once.

The restaurant

Mon Oncle sits in Universitetsgata and holds a Michelin star. It was part of the Maaemo group until 2023, when Esben Holmboe Bang handed it over to his head chef, Dimitri Veith, who has run and co-owned it since. The kitchen is French — classical technique, Norwegian produce — and the cellar is built around France, with Champagne at its centre. The list has been recognised by Star Wine List.

Veith grew up in Reims. There are not many kitchens in Oslo where a table of Vieilles Vignes Françaises would be met by someone from the region that made it, cooking for it on purpose. The menu for the evening is his.

The dinner is held by Tales of the Crayères in collaboration with Norsk Vinfagskole.

The nine wines

Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2014
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2013
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2012
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2010
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2009
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2008
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2007
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2006
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises 2005

All are 100% Pinot Noir from Grand Cru Aÿ, fermented in oak.

Fourteen seats, 20 January from 18:00.