In the mid-1960s, the Champagne world had a rhythm it didn’t like to break. Most houses released their vintages as quickly as the market would swallow them, rushing to turn their harvest into profit. But Lily Bollinger was never one to follow the rhythm of others—she preferred to conduct the orchestra. In 1967, inside a hired Bentley stalled in the “snarled traffic” of a London on the brink of a cultural revolution, Lily checked her gold Bulova watch—a cherished gift from her late husband, Jacques. She was late for a high-stakes interview at the Savoy Hotel that would define her legacy: the official launch of the Bollinger R.D.

To understand why R.D. was such a shock to the industry, you have to understand both the science and the soul of the grape. Most vintage Champagnes are separated from their “lees”—the yeast sediment—after just a few years. It is a standard, efficient practice. Lily’s radical idea, however, was to leave the wine in contact with that yeast for much longer—sometimes fifteen years or more. She wanted to let the wine sleep in the cool, limestone silence of her caves in Aÿ, allowing the sediment to slowly transform the liquid into something ethereal and complex.

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