Best new champagne for Spring 2024, from Bollinger to Veuve Clicquot
Spring is a time of new beginnings and new life. Lambs gambol, chicks cheep and certain wine houses are offering up their latest babies for consumption, too. Recently there have been some exciting new releases: lovers of high-end sparkling wine and champagne, please take note.
Champagne Bollinger La Grande Année 2015
£175, Berry Bros & Rudd
Bollinger is unique among Champagne houses for its use of wood. It is the only champagne to ferment all its wines in oak, retaining its own cooper, or barrel maker, specifically for its wines. This fact I learned last week in Paris, where I enjoyed a demonstration by said cooper ahead of a wood-themed lunch by 2-star Michelin chef Olivier Nasti. Under a “forest” canopy of nearly 10,000 bits of paper, journalists from all around the world were invited to celebrate La Grande Année, a wine only created in the best years.
This champagne screams Bollinger at its most rich and opulent, being a burnished gold in colour with fine bubbles and an intense, heady aroma. For me this wine exploded with plummy fruits, waxy orange peel, gingerbread spice and a spritz of grapefruit zest. There is even a sherry-esque intensity to it, balanced by an uplifting mineral, saline finish.
If you like your champagnes to come with age, to be powerful and generous, savoury and intense then this is the wine for you. It is fabulous now, but I would be intrigued as to how it will develop over the next five or ten years.
Champagne Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Rosé 2015
£205, Jeroboams
On the other sides of the spectrum, but still very much a premium wine, is the release of this rosé Champagne with the tag line “Optimism Through Colour”. Launched at London’s The Pem, this cuvée is a tribute to the formidable and remarkable Grande Dame of Champagne herself. Madame Clicquot was widowed at the age of 27 and took control of the family business. 1772 was not a time known for embracing female entrepreneurs, but she led the way in innovation. Previously champagnes had been coloured pink with an elderberry tint, but Madame Clicquot blended in some still red wine from her vineyards. The first to create this blend, a practice still used today, means that she is in many ways the inventor of modern rosé champagne.
A Pinot Noir dominant blend, this pretty pink wine opens to delightful floral notes of violet and rose petals, followed by juicy fresh strawberries, raspberries and currants. It may be refined but it is still complex with the aging bringing layers of freshly baked brioche, a little clove spice, whispers of vanilla, blood orange and earl grey tea. An undeniably happy wine that embodies Springtime sophistication.
French Bloom La Cuvée Blanc de Blancs
£109, Harrods
Though founded by Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger and model Constance Jablonski, it was Maggie and her husband Rodolphe Frerejean-Taittinger who met with me at 67 Pall Mall for the unveiling of this most premium of non-alcoholic sparkling wines. Given the family background in Champagne, it is perhaps unsurprising they have aimed high and this new La Cuvée Blanc de Blancs has been 4 years in the making.
After a few experiments they now create an intense base wine and then de-alcoholise it slowly and gently three times before carbonating the wine to create the bubbles.
French Bloom has no added sugar or additional use of sulphites, it is vegan and organic but there is something else that sets it apart. Non-alcoholic wines are made to be drunk immediately so they often taste fresh and fruity. This however has been made to smell and taste like it has been aged and they hope to appeal to the vintage champagne consumer who fancies some time off the booze.
It opens to deep scents of fig, prune, caramelised nuts, ripe pears and lightly fermenting sourdough. With fine bubbles and a long finish, it is richer than any other 0% offering I have tried, as the clientele will have to be as this is also the most expensive zero alcohol drink I have ever come across.