For starters, Congy is in the Sézannais, which is an off-the-beaten-path part of Champagne, south and west of the Côtes des Blancs and north and east of the Côtes de Sézanne. There are no Grand or 1er Crus in the Sézannais. Second, the story of Olivier’s ascendance to winemaking is singular. The Collin family vines had been rented to Pommery in an incredibly binding lease and during the late ‘90s, Olivier studied law with the intention of legally reclaiming the vines. Then he discreetly popped up to Avize for a life-changing apprenticeship with Anselme Selosse in the early 2000s. In 2003, he was poised and ready to begin his own winemaking endeavour, borrowing heavily from what he had learned from Selosse about biodynamics, healthy soil, wines of terroir, etc… However, a spring frost ruined the 2003 crop, meaning that Collin’s first vintage, made from a 1.2-hectare parcel called “Les Pierrières,” was 2004.
Since 2004, Collin has become one of the most interesting “new wave” Champagne vignerons (meaning a grower making single-vineyard, ultra terroir specific wines). There’s great attention to both vineyard and cellar work at Domaine Ulysse Collin and Collin’s importer (LDM) points out that once he had reclaimed the family land, his first purchases were a tractor to work the soil and a set of used Burgundy barrels to ferment his base wines. Work in the vines is essentially organic and progressing further in that direction each year as Collin’s operation expands and develops (he now farms just shy of 9 hectares). In the cellar, Collin uses a special square press, which he feels better extracts minerals and tannins from the juice. Fermentations take place with native yeast and are generally quite lengthy. The base wines then spend an additional year or more in barrel before the second fermentation. Collin’s is very much a project of patience. Like several other notable contemporaries such as Cédric Bouchard, the chief goal is to make great still wine; the bubbles are for lift and liveliness. Like Bouchard’s wines, Collin’s are bottled under fewer atmospheres of pressure.
What makes Olivier Collin’s wines experimental and controversial? We’d say “taste one and find out!” The grapes are harvested extremely ripe, often at over 12 degrees potential alcohol, and they are bottled with almost no dosage (1-2 grams). They are distinct, vinous Champagnes that vividly show the minerality of the three sites Collin farms: Les Pierrières, Les Roises, and Les Maillons. (It was only with the 2008 vintage that Collin began to put the vineyard names on the bottlings.) They are intensely complex and a bit complicated, Champagnes of personality – they like air to show best.
