After an impressive fruit phase, it has spent years dominated by acidity, firmly structured and aromatically restrained. While many reductively tank-aged 2008s close down, this one opens up considerably with prolonged aeration and the drinking pleasure returns. Truly mature aromas, however, will only emerge in a few years’ time, and with good cellaring the drinking window remains wide open well beyond 2050.
Richard Juhlin calls Bollinger La Grande Année 2008 a “regal and heroic Bollinger” and alludes to its tremendous concentration, full body and fabulous acid structure that will carry it for decades. Even among prestige cuvées, such perfection has not been seen for over thirty years.
As is customary at Bollinger, the house’s noblest champagne is released to enthusiasts in two major tranches: first as Grande Année in early 2018, and then in March 2023 as R.D. with significantly longer lees ageing.
After gentle pressing, only the first pressing (tête de cuvée) is used; the second pressing is sold off. Following cold stabilisation and clarification, La Grande Année is matured in four-year-old oak barrels to prevent the base wines from picking up excessive oak tannins.
Malolactic fermentation is neither actively encouraged nor blocked, so precise information is difficult to provide. Because each parcel and each variety is vinified separately in small oak barrels, whether malolactic fermentation begins and completes depends on the bacterial activity in each individual barrel.
Whereas the Special Cuvée is sometimes lightly filtered, La Grande Année 2008 was bottled unfiltered. After maturation of the base wines, they are tasted and blended. Bollinger is renowned for its rigorous selection and rejection of weaker barrels.
Bottle fermentation then follows, lasting nine years for the 2008 vintage. Riddling and disgorging are carried out by hand, as is tradition for Grande Année. The 2008 is dosed at 8 g/l, placing it at the drier end of Brut.
Rarely has the word “Grande” been more appropriate for a vintage than 2008, which in a once-in-a-generation manner combines the charm of ripe, creamy primary fruit with fabulous, intense yet never aggressive acidity.
Drinking window: now and well beyond 2050.
A glance at the Alfavin cellar
A glance at the Alfavin cellar
A glance at the Alfavin Cellar