“The 2025 harvest is the perfect balance between ripeness and acidity,” Champagne Bollinger managing director Charles-Armand de Belenet says, introducing the lunch event at London’s Michelin-starred Hide restaurant.
Clearly delighted after the tough conditions in the Champagne region last year, vineyards director Gael Vuille adds, “the fruit ripening this year was record-breaking, the conditions were almost opposite to those of 2024.”
Charles-Armand de Belenet: "2025 is an exciting year for blending and the opportunity to recreate some distinctive reserve wines."
This year a warm and dry spring with no frost meant that bud burst was three days earlier, and flowering five days earlier. The heatwave then accelerated the cycle, but 2025 wasn’t a record early harvest date. What is exceptional about 2025 is a unique balance between maturity (10.6% alcohol for Pinot Noir and 11.1% for Chardonnay) and well-preserved acidity levels (6g per litre acid levels and pH levels below 3.1).
August is the month that now one in two harvests starts due to the impact of global warming. This year the Bollinger harvest started on August 25th and went through to the latest Chardonnay picked by September 5th. The Chardonnay yield was moderate with disappointing bunch weight but the Pinot Noir was very pleasing. Belenet says it is an exciting year for blending and the opportunity to recreate some distinctive reserve wines.
A vintage year?
With such a promising harvest, could it be a special year to create a Bollinger vintage La Grande Année premium cuvée, we ask? “There is a high probability,” Belenet says with a twinkle in his eye. “We may have a vintage, but it’s a little bit too early to declare yet.” We sense he is rather more than cautiously optimistic.
Passion for Pinot Noir
Bollinger has a passion for Pinot Noir believing it has some of the best in Champagne. Famous for the Vieilles Vignes Françaises historic plots, Bollinger has been keen to make its Pinot Noir more accessible and the inaugural edition of the PN series from the 2015 vintage was first released in 2020. The small Vieilles Vignes Françaises can only produce around 1,000 bottles a year.
We taste the sixth edition Bollinger PN TX20 at the lunch – launched in Paris earlier in June. “The idea is to make a new cuvée with the taste of Pinot Noir every year,” says Belenet. “We can show the diversity of Pinot Noir every year. It’s a very sensitive grape with a thin skin so reacts differently impacted by the climate or by the soil.”
The idea originated from a challenge to Belenet’s team from the late chef de cave Gilles Descôtes to work on their own to create a 100% Pinot Noir blend that could be available every year using a blend of any suitable wines in the cellar. The very broad brief was simply it should be ‘a pleasure to drink’. The best blend was selected in a blind tasting – it turned out to have 25% reserve wines in magnum (special cuvée is just 5% to 7%), 50% vinified wine in barrels and one cru is always dominant. In 2015 it was Verzenay (surprising not Aÿ, the backbone of Bollinger).
This clever ‘recipe’ Bollinger has repeated ever since, selecting the most exciting village for Pinot Noir each year and creating the blend.
“It is not a vintage – it’s more complex than that! – but the majority of the wines are from that year. The dominant cru was again from Verzenay in 2016, from Tauxières in 2017, Aÿ in 2018 and Verzenay again in 2019. This year (2020) PNTX 20 is again from Tauxières, a village on the Montagne de Reims,” says Belenet.
That line-up in full
The PN name
The abbreviation letter and number style name of the Pinot Noir series is akin to the descriptive letters and numbers used for the grape varieties and vintages on the chalk boards in the Bollinger cellars.
Belenet reveals there may be other villages in future too. The next has already been selected, but his lips are sealed as to which one!
Champagne Bollinger PNTX 20 tasting
This gastronomic wine is paired with beautiful ‘land and sea’ dishes with ‘bread and broth’ created by Hide chef director Josh Angus.
Golden yellow, the wine has an elegant and complex flavour profile of juicy plum and soft apple with undertones of pastry. There is a balance of richness and freshness with compote-like fruit nuances and the finish is expansive and refined with a hint of salinity. It has the classic Mirabelle-plum 'Bollinger nose', laden with redcurrant and sourdough aromas.
The base vintage is 2020 with reserve wines from older vintages including 2008 and 2012.
Champagne Bollinger B16
This is a limited edition which we are told will disappear in a few months. Its creation was borne out of pure creativity from what was a difficult year. There was frost and mildew and then a very hot summer.
In fact, 2016 was the middle of three difficult years.The first in 2015 became a La Grande Année year despite everything. But in 2016 there were less strict guidelines and creativity was encouraged. B16 has spent over seven years on lees and explores the unique aroma profiles found in the latest ripening areas of the Montagne de Reims.
Delicate floral aromas interlace with scents of hawthorn and acacia honey in a display of the bouquet’s infinite finesse. Accents of ripe stone fruits and bergamot bring a lively freshness. It is bold but also has purity and a silky elegant texture, quite different to La Grande Année’s opulent style. It is Extra Brut with a low dosage of 7g per litre.
B16 is beautifully paired with sea bream tartare, lime, coriander and green Thai coconut sauce.
La Côte aux Enfants Champagne 2015
To pair with the main course of English Aynhoe venison, smoked beetroot, Kalibos cabbage, walnut and Madeira jus we enjoy La Côte aux Enfants Champagne 2015. It is from the unique parcel in Aÿ, established by Jacques Bolinger himself between 1926 and 1934. The chalky parcel proved to have the potential to create great characterful vintage champagne from 100% Pinot Noir. This single vineyard rarity has depth and layers of orange blossom, quince and golden raisins. The palate has great texture, energy and vibrancy and the finish is beautifully long and saline.
Over a delightful selection of cheese and petits fours of canelé cooked in beeswax and date caramel with hazelnut chocolate, we end with a classic Bollinger Special Cuvée en Magnum.
The magmum is the perfect note to end on. We have seen clearly the Bollinger DNA and its latest innovations. It’s good to learn too about the producer’s sustainability efforts and experiments with ways to tackle climate change. For Bollinger you can see the PN series is the perfect ambassador of the Maison’s style. As the managing director explains, “It’s about Pinot Noir, it’s vinification in oak barrels, it’s about reserve wines in magnums – this is exactly what we stand for.”
Still more exciting times are yet to come. Bollinger has just announced a new limited edition Special Cuvée 007 to mark 45 years as the official partner of the James Bond franchise and a global deal with carmaker Aston Martin. That’s on top of the Royal Warrant it was granted by King Charles last year – the first one goes back 140 years ago, granted by Queen Victoria.
The Maison will enjoy more time in the limelight next March which sees the opening of Bollinger’s new barrel room (expanded to 5,000 oak barrels from 3,000). Then in 2027 the historic Bollinger house will be fully renovated, in 2028 the Bollinger hotel and restaurant will open its doors, and 2029 will be Bollinger’s bicentenary. Some of us hopefuls have our diaries out already!
Mentzendorff is the distributor for Bollinger in the UK (a relationship which goes back as far as 1858) and is a commercial partner of The Buyer. To discover more about them click here.
