The 2015 Brut La Grande Année was disgorged last year with eight grams per liter dosage. The wine has turned out beautifully, exhibiting a more muscular, old-school Bollinger profile in contrast to the unusually racy, fine-boned 2014 that preceded it. Wafting from the glass with notes of pear, orange oil and white flowers mingled with notions of mocha, toasted hazelnuts and fino sherry, it's medium to full-bodied, layered and textural, with a dense core of fruit framed by chalky structuring extract, concluding with a long, sapid finish. Today, the 2015 Champagne vintage enjoys a mixed reputation, largely because some wines show an herbal aromatic signature indicative of incomplete maturation resulting from hydric stress. But of course, it's hard to generalize about so large a region, whose diversity of terroirs is compounded by equally diverse agronomic approaches, and the success of Bollinger's 2015s is a case in point. Why have these wines turned out so well? The house's best terroirs are located on chalk, so their vines experienced less hydric stress. Bollinger's practice of vinifying small lots in barrel and blending comparatively late also permitted the elimination of any lots showing herbaceous characteristics that other houses would likely have blended during vinification. The result is a Grande Année derived from only 11 of the potential 20 communes that can inform the blend, with an emphasis on the Montagne de Reims in the blend to bring more cut. Harvest started on September 8, and the lack of water throughout the season and, particularly at "nouaison," the moment when the infant berries form, resulted in 30% less berry mass than an average year. Those small berries without much juice made pressing more challenging than usual, but they have delivered a wine framed by unusually high levels of dry extract that contributes real phenolic mid-palate weight that will delight readers who love vinous, sapid Champagnes that are built to age. Drink 2025 - 2045.
Source: Robert Parker.