2012 bollinger, la grande annee rose

Marketplace price

Bottle size (ML)

Why We're Buying

The sibling of Bollinger La Grande Année, the Rosé version has a personality all its own. It leads with strawberry and raspberry aromas while maintaining the multi-layered complexity that Bollinger is known for. To quote Wine.com's Wilfred Wong, "No one does it better." It was the least surprising news of the year. Critics loved 2012 Bollinger La Grande Année Rosé. Not only that, but the Champagne earned its highest aggregate scores of any vintage. La Grande Année Rosé wins over people from the start with lavish aromas and flavors of red berries, honey, nuts, and sweet spice. Known as James Bond’s favorite Champagne, Bollinger is often described as powerful and muscular. While La Grande Année Rosé demonstrates consistent weight and power, it wields more grace and subtlety than most wines in the Bollinger portfolio. The driving forces behind this multidimensional rosé: an immaculate 2012 growing season. A mild and sunny autumn led to richly concentrated ripe grapes. Contrary to the prevailing customs of the region, Bollinger ages the champagne in magnums rather than tanks. The result is a wine that is uniquely Bollinger.

Critics Scores

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Disgorged with eight grams per liter dosage, Bollinger's 2012 Brut La Grande Année Rosé is showing beautifully, wafting from the glass with aromas of raspberries, plums, orange rind, walnuts and fresh bread that only hint of the complexity to come. Full-bodied, broad and vinous, with fine depth at the core, a pinpoint mousse and racy acids, it concludes with a long and perfumed finish. The blend includes 5 red wine exclusively from Bollinger's La Côte Aux Enfants vineyard—which imparts delicate phenolic grip.

Wine Spectator

Enticing aromas and flavors of wild strawberry, apricot and Macadamia nut are woven with accents of saffron, ground ginger, honey and orange peel in this seamlessly knit rosé in a vinous style. Satiny in texture, with an overall grace that belies the powerful tension and focus throughout, driving the lasting finish. Drink now through 2035.

Vinous

The 2012 La Grande Année Rosé is airy, gracious and so wonderfully inviting. Crushed flowers, mint, white pepper and red berry fruit are all gracefully woven together. Today, the 2012 is naturally quite young and still shows the tension of a Champagne that was disgorged just a few months ago. Readers who prefer Champagnes with softer edges and a bit more flavor complexity will want to cellar the 2012. I have to admit, I very much like the wine today, in its youthful state, where its energy and focus are front and center. The 2012 is a blend of 67 Pinot Noir and 33 Chardonnay taken from 21 villages built around a core of Aÿ and Verzenay Pinot Noir and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oiry Chardonnay, crus that are quite complementary.

Wine Enthusiast

As a rich dense Champagne that manages to bring in so many complex flavors, this is impressive. It has tense acidity, along with fresh red fruits that are just beginning to deepen and concentrate. They are balanced with the minerality and acidity as well as the weight of the Pinot Noir. Begin to drink this beautiful wine now although it has many years ahead of it.

Decanter

5 of red wine has been added by assemblage from the legendary La Cote Aux Enfants vineyard in Aÿ. The resulting power is subtle, gastronomic and bewitching: as a corollary to a lighter, onion-skin colour, there's an intensity and length on the palate allied to perfect integration of the 8g/l of sugar and the legacy of both oak fermentation and long yeast maturation, the latter under cork. The vinous power is such that this will match rich, savoury dishes such as quail, venison, pigeon and guinea fowl. A triumph!