Here’s a short film of Champagne Bollinger’s two small (0.15 and 0.21 hectares) vineyards of ungrafted vines, planted en foule (‘in a crowd’) by a technique called layering. The fruit from here is used to make the Vieilles Vignes Francaises, a rare, unusual and expensive wine that I’ve only tried once.
My three-part report on last year’s visit to Bollinger is now live on the main wineanorak site, here.
4 Comments on Video: Bollinger’s ungrafted vieilles vignes
Fascinating video and loved your Bollinger main site story. Is there a reason that Bollinger take such a large risk in planting ungrafted vines? Is it simply because they want to use this old method of pruning, or is there a flavor/style reason?
Not such a large risk as 0.15 ares is a tiny vineyard! Actually I think that’s a typo – do you mean 0.15 hectares Jamie? Still pretty small whichever way you look at it.
Chris, you are right, it’s 15 and 21 ares = 0.15 and 0.21 hectares
Martin, I think those plots have just been there for a very long time – only since the 1970s that they’ve made a separate wine from them – a bit of living history, I suspect
Very interesting vineyard management method. Based on the numbers in your article, the yield is roughly 3500kg for that plot in ordser to produce that volume of wine. Must be some significant rooting in that growing year to support that load?
That topsoil looked pretty sandy…maybe that is helping to inhibit the louse?
Thanks, and I am enjoying reading “The Science of Wine”.