OUR WINE CHOICE: BOLLINGER LA GRAND ANNÉE 2015 AND LA GRANDE ANNÉE ROSÉ 2015

It’s always an event for Champagne drinkers and collectors when a new vintage of Bollinger’s stylish and structured wines is released. Our Wine Choice this week takes a close look at the new Bollinger La Grand Année Brut 2015 and La Grande Anneé Brut Rosé 2015 and confirms that Bollinger fans won’t be disappointed.

Denis Bunner, the cellar master at Bollinger, explained during a Zoom call how the challenging growing season in Champagne nevertheless turned out impressive wines with concentration and elegance. Winemakers like him had to manage their way through what he called “the hottest and driest year we have ever recorded in Champagne.”

It meant that ripeness was not an issue, but delivering the ripeness along with great acidity and freshness was more difficult to manage. Bunner worked previously in research for the Comite Champagne (CIVC), concentrating on the characteristic of freshness in Champagne wines, what it is and how to enhance it.

Bunner, who joined Bollinger in 2013, assisted former cellarmaster Gilles Descotes in managing the 2015 harvest, applying his research to help make adjustments as needed. For one, the Grand Annee Brut is always pinot noir dominant, typically 70 percent, while chardonnay makes up 30 percent, but that year they increased the chardonnay to 40 percent of the blend, giving it more elegance and balance. In addition, a larger portion of the pinot noir was sourced from the Montagne de Reims, where the cooler microclimate allows higher acidity in the grapes.

Tasting the 2015s reminded me of the ripe and generous 1989 vintage, and Bunner acknowledged the similarity. He said that 2015 offers the fruitiness of 1989 with the appealing dry quality of 1976, and added that 2003 was another similar year.

The brut is fragrant and toasty, with a subtle, earthy-smoky nuance that is typical of the Bollinger style. It’s layered in tropical fruits with a hint of pleasant bitterness like that in marmalade. As usual, the base wines, both the brut and the rosé, were fermented in oak casks. After bottling under natural cork for the second fermentation, the wine stayed on the lees and was riddled by hand before disgorging by hand in May 2023. The dosage is 8 g/L.

As for the Bollinger La Grand Annee Rosé 2015, it tasted wonderfully layered, complex and appetizing. The pinot noir grapes come from selected plots of Bollinger’s La Cote aux Enfants vineyard, giving both black and red fruit nuances along with blood orange. The dosage is 7 g/L. The rosé blend is 38 percent chardonnay and 62 percent pinot noir, of which 5 percent is red wine from La Côte aux Enfants vineyards.

– Jim Gordon, Executive Editor