Neil Beckett welcomes the release of 2014 Bollinger La Côte aux Enfants and Vieilles Vignes Françaises.
Swapping children for the devil. Happily, this wasn’t a Champenois twist on the Faustian pact but rather the renaming of a very special Bollinger monopole vineyard in its grand cru home village of Aÿ, once known as La Côte aux Enfers (Hell’s Hill), due to the steepness of the slope, but more recently given the less diabolical name of La Côte aux Enfants, because children were thought to be the only ones who could easily scamper up it. (For more on the fascinating history of this vineyard, see Essi Avellan MW’s Review piece on the red Coteaux Champenois produced here since the 1834 vintage, shortly after Jacques Bollinger completed the purchase of all 50 parcels across the 4ha [10-acre] site; WFW 73, pp.88–90).
Champagne will always be largely about the art of assemblage, but there are, wonderfully, some villages and single vineyards that deserve to stand alone, due to their distinctive and, even rarer, their sufficiently rounded personality. Complexity is as crucial a consideration as singularity. And as clear a case as any is La Côte aux Enfants. Because of its ability to produce exceptionally ripe Pinot Noir, its southern sector has long been the source of Bollinger’s still red wine (the Aÿ Rouge/Coteaux Champenois and now, after a slightly different vinification, the red wine used for Bollinger’s Vintage La Grande Année Rosé). But the ability of the cooler northwestern sector to produce
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
