Inside Bollinger’s La Grande Année 2018

Back in October, I hosted a Wines of Hungary event at the farm for around 30 people. October, as it turns out, is a tricky month. The weather can be dazzling or catastrophic. With the help of Ralph Offer, owner of the wonderful George and Dragon in Seaton, we pulled off a successful, if slightly rustic, evening.

What people didn’t see was the week before. My incredible mum and I decided we couldn’t risk hosting outdoors, so we cleared out the hay and straw room next to the stables and transformed it into an event space. If you don’t regularly stuff haynets, you won’t know just how dusty even the best-quality hay can be. Somehow, we made it work. It was one of those whimsical moments where you think, what if this could be a permanent event space? But while we still have horses, there simply isn’t room to store the large round bales elsewhere. It’s a working farm. Fairy lights are temporary.

Last week, I saw this idea on a completely different scale.

On March 10, I was lucky enough to attend a once-in-a-lifetime cellar dinner in Aÿ, Champagne. It was the first and only dinner held in Bollinger’s newly renovated cellars. Once the decorations are gone, the space will return to being a barrel room. A space that will give them room for 1,000 more barrels. For us, it was a fleeting moment. A three Michelin starred dinner by César Troisgros of Maison Troisgros, paired with the unveiling of the new vintage of Bollinger La Grande Année.

The evening began with a tour of the cellars, where we met Olivier, a full-time riddler and disgorging specialist. All vintages are hand-riddled and disgorged. Only the Special Cuvée is done mechanically. Olivier turns bottles three times a week and can handle up to 45,000 bottles a day, enough to make my wrists retreat into my sleeves in fear. There are two full-time riddlers and a trainee. Interestingly, candlelight remains the best way to spot sediment during riddling.

But we’ve jumped the gun a little talking about riddling and disgorging.

The new release of La Grande Année is the 2018 vintage, priced at around £150 per bottle including duty and VAT. Personally, I think that’s a bargain, and here’s why.

Do you remember 2018? That long, hot summer when every patch of grass turned to hay. After a tough, wet winter, even snow, the rain simply stopped from late spring onwards. Champagne experienced the same conditions, with just 50mm of rain between mid-June and harvest. The result was one of the earliest harvests on record, August 23rd. Early, yes, but with Pinot Noir at its very best.

Despite common belief, Bollinger doesn’t use only Pinot Noir. The 2018 La Grande Année is a blend of 66% Pinot Noir and 34% Chardonnay from 19 villages, 73% Grand Cru and 27% Premier Cru. The more I think about champagne, which is every day, the more I think what an art it is creating the end result.

Vinification takes place exclusively in small, old oak barrels. The wine is then aged on its lees under natural cork for seven years before being riddled and disgorged by hand, something increasingly rare, even among grower Champagnes. We were very lucky to taste reserve wines of both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, each vinified in different vessels. At that stage, they are so far from the finished wine, yet so clearly the foundation of it. It’s a firm reminder, particularly to a room full of journalists, that champagne is anything but straightforward.

And then there is the vineyard work itself. The vines in Champagne are trained low, often using the cordon pruning method, which means an extraordinary amount of bending, stooping and back-breaking labour. When you consider that, and then see a bottle priced at around £90, you realise it really is something of a bargain.

Dinner, of course, was extraordinary. Every course by César Troisgros was thoughtful and inspired, but one in particular stood out. Langoustine, gently cooked in Bollinger Champagne and covered like a small molehill in exquisitely fresh truffle. So fresh it felt almost like the earth itself. I’ve always been slightly wary of champagne-led tasting menus, but this completely changed my mind. A phobia has been cured. 

And the wine. This is where it all comes together.

There is a striking salinity, making it, quite simply, the perfect oyster wine. In French, they talk about amertume noble, that gentle, pleasant bitterness, and it is exactly the right descriptor here. It’s a bold choice to embrace bitterness in a wine like this, but Bollinger understands its wines so well that it becomes not just acceptable, but essential. The texture plays beautifully with food, giving the wine both structure and generosity.

Tasted from magnum, it shows even greater energy and salinity, alongside deep, toasty notes that feel almost endless.

At around £90 a bottle, for something that demands this much time, labour and confidence I don't need too much convincing at all...especially with the current prices of diesel. 

Dosage: 7g/L
Disgorged: March 2025