Andreas Larsson - Tasted

Medium deep golden colour with a mild creamy mousseux. Intense, ripe and mature nose with darker fruit notes, certainly Pinot-driven with raspberry plum, pear, roasted hazelnut and fine autolytic brioche and floral notes. The palate is concentrated with a bright and refreshing acidity, rounded creaminess and layers of nutty windfall, nougat and sweet citrus, and a very long, powerful and fresh finish. Good maturity and great drinkability.

Champagne Club by Richard Juhlin

It may seem surprising that Bollinger jumped over the estimated 2006 vintage and instead betting on the underdog year 2007. For me, the choice is entirely logical when the house style lends itself much better than the austere years as fruit bombs. Here we have a classically balanced Bollinger with deep flavor layers and tight beautiful malic acids. Brilliant balance between the dark well of depth and refreshing crispness. Layers of dry cocoa, hazelnut cream, dried apricots and red juicy apples dominates a beautiful forest aroma of undergrowth and chanterelles.

Jeb Dunnuck

I loved the 2007 Champagne La Grande Année, which is based on 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay. Over 90% of this cuvée was sourced from Grand Cru sites, with the balance from Premier Cru villages. Vinified all in older barrels and aged 6 years in bottle on lees, it boasts a deep, rich, creamy style as well as full-bodied notes of ripe stone fruits, wood smoke, and spice. It has vibrant acidity, impressive length, and notable purity, all making for a classy, impressive Champagne that will keep for 10-15 years.

Jean-Marc Quarin

Wine & Spirits Magazine

Falstaff

Medium yellow-green, subtle silver shimmers, fine persistent mousse. Delicately scented dried fruit tones, a hint of yellow apple and vanilla, white flowers, mineral touch, multi-faceted. Taut, mineral, subtle nutty tones, lively, striking acidity, notes of almonds and white pears on the finish. Already approachable but with very good ageing potential, perfectly precise, tight-knit style, has real class. (Degor: 9/2016)߭.

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

From a bottle disgorged in March 2017, Bollinger's 2007 La Grande Année is showing brilliantly, offering up a superb bouquet of lemon oil, confit citrus, almond paste, iodine, walnut oil and freshly baked bread. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, broad-shouldered and powerful in this frequently rather slender vintage, with excellent concentration, a deep and tightly wound core and a precise, chalky finish.

I have tasted an excellent, beautifully fresh, precise and and persistent range of Bollinger Champagne. The Brut Rosé is just fabulous and helps to bridge the time we have to wait for the promising and highly refined 2007 Grande Année Rosé that still needs some years in the bottle to play out its class and complexity. 2007 saw a very early harvest, and the exceptional wines are characterized by freshness and finesse. For the moment, I prefer the very fine, elegant and chalky style of the Grande Année Rosé to the more rich and full-bodied Blanc. I'm also excited to follow the evolution of the 2004 R. D. Extra Brut that was just disgorged in February and combines freshness with maturity but will improve over the years. The 2014 La Côte aux Enfants, a 12% alcohol Pinot Noir from Aÿ, is a filigreed red Coteaux Champenois and is fabulous in its lightness, purity and elegance. However, it is still young and peppery and needs some years to gain more complexity.

There are plenty of projects afoot at Bollinger, as chef des caves Gilles Descotes explained to me during my early April visit—my first in some years to this important Aÿ-based domaine. One of the most important changes is that Bollinger has entirely abandoned the use of herbicides for four years now, an initiative that began with the impulse to rehabilitate their famed red wine monopole, La Côte aux Enfants, and which was gradually rolled out across all their holdings. Their facilities have expanded too, to make space for more barrels to insure a sufficiently abundant supply of wood-fermented base wine from the Special Cuvée in years when Grande Année is also produced. And the still red Coteaux Champennois from La Côte aux Enfants is returning to the range, from 2015 vinified separately from the red wines destined to rosé production, with some whole clusters added to the cuves. Descotes also has been working to better manage Bollinger's gently oxidative style, and while fermentation and maturation in old wood still lends Bollinger its strong and distinctive style, oxygen inputs at other stages in the winemaking process are more carefully controlled, resulting in more consistency and structural tension—a trend exemplified by the brilliant 2008 Grande Année (97+), which I reviewed last month. There's so much more to say about this house, but much of that can wait for an in-depth article in a future issue. For the time being, it's sufficient to note that all these recent releases come warmly recommended.