Bollinger La Grande Annee 2014

Bollinger La Grande Année Champagne, France, 2014

Grapes: A blend comprising 61% Pinot Noir and 39% Chardonnay. Fermented entirely in aged oak barrels.

The wine is made from 21 villages with Aÿ and Verzenay in the driver`s seat backed by elegance from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oiry. The wine is characterised by vitality and energy more than depth at present. The colour has a brilliant golden glow and the mousse is almost panting in its resilient youthfulness. The scent is beautifully house typical, dominated by apricot, almond, hazelnut and a smoky sophisticated intensity as from a newly lit outdoor fire. The attack is stunningly intense and the weight in the oral cavity leaves nothing left to wish for. Resilient energy and fullness are combined with greatness. Anyone who has patience will be rewarded with truffled flavour layers, chocolate saturated complexity and added exoticism of honeysuckle in the wine's bouquet. 95pts Richard Juhlin 

"Offering up complex aromas of crisp yellow orchard fruit, confit citrus, frangipane, walnuts, dried white flowers and subtle hints of iodine, Bollinger's 2014 Brut La Grande Année is medium to full-bodied, pillowy and vinous, with an elegantly fleshy core of fruit that's underpinned by racy acids and complemented by a pretty pinpoint mousse. Concluding with a long, chalky finish, this is a charming but precise Grande Année that's more giving and demonstrative than its immediate predecessor, the 2012, but which attains a very similar level of quality in a more challenging vintage—testimony to the serious viticulture that underpins Bollinger's contemporary excellence."

95/100 points, William Kelley, WINE ADVOCATE, March 2022

In the 2014 vintage, Bollinger has once again produced both a Grande Année and Grande Année Rosé. The fruit of a cooler, rather rainy season punctuated by a sunny month of June, in 2014 Bollinger opted to pick late but quickly, harvesting all of their fruit in a mere 10 days; and the house's blends for Grande Année favored the crus of Verzy and Verzenay, and an unusually high proportion of Chardonnay (at 39%). The result is two very elegant, precise, giving Champagnes, with all the mid-palate intensity one expects from Bollinger but defined more by purity and precision than by power. Charming and expressive out of the gates, they're also built to age with grace. Bollinger's Denis Brunner describes the 2014 vintage as one of pure "classicism" for the house, after the more "baroque" 2012s, and that's a very concise summation of the distinctions readers will find in the glass, which I'm at a loss to better. But I'll add that the quality of these 2014s is indicative of the serious agronomy that distinguishes Bollinger's vineyards as, along with Roederer's, the best maintained of any big houses' in the region. Both wines reviewed here come warmly recommended. (William Kelley)