Bollinger hails the quality potential of the 2025 harvest

Bollinger’s team is celebrating what they describe as an exceptional 2025 Champagne harvest, combining early ripening, fine balance and healthy yields. Managing director Charles-Armand de Belenet and vineyard director Gaël Vuille say it could well become a declared vintage.

The quality of the 2025 Champagne harvest is already being hailed as very high by the Champenois. At a presentation in Hide restaurant last month, Bollinger managing director Charles-Armand de Belenet and vineyard director Gaël Vuille both extolled its virtues.

“There were great hopes for it early in the growing season, with almost no frost or hail and very few disease issues after all the rain in 2024 and the severe ensuing mildew problems,” said de Belenet. “Happily the early promise materialised.”

Early flowering and rapid ripening

“We had a warm spring in 2025, and the warm weather lasted into June and July, when some rainfall offset the generally very dry conditions,” explained Vuille. “We had virtually no mildew and oidium was absent too, though there was a little sunburn damage (échaudage) during hot spells in July and August.”

Thanks to the warm spring weather, bud burst took place “three days earlier than on average on 9 April [Pinot Noir] and full flowering happened in the first week of June [around the 6th for Pinot Noir] about six days earlier than normal. At this point we were expecting the harvest to start around 30 August,” said Vuille. But in fact, they began a week earlier, finishing picking Pinot Noir in the four-hectare La Côte aux Enfants [Aÿ] plot on 4 September and the last Chardonnay on 6 September.

Record warmth and balance

“Eighty-six days has become the average time between budbreak and the harvest start. We used to talk about 1976 being the hottest ever harvest, but now the 2025 harvest has pushed ’76 back to 11th place. We have had ten earliest harvest records in the past 15 years. An August harvest used to be a rarity, now it happens almost every other year and 2018, 2022 and 2025 have been the three earliest ripening harvests ever, while 2020 was also an August harvest.

“At Bollinger we picked at 10.6° for Pinot Noir and 11.1° for Chardonnay and acidity at around 6 g/l. With a pH at 3.1 we had a very good balance between maturity and acidity, which was a good surprise given the warm temperatures and abundant sunshine.”

Yield and varietal variation

Yield too held up well and better than for many producers, at around 10 kg/ha on average, although Vuille noted “disappointing bunch weight for Chardonnay”.

“The excess yield over the maximum permitted in 2025 (9,000 kg/ha) will enable us to replace some of the less good material put into the individual reserve from last year’s crop. But there is a lack of Chardonnay in 2025.

“Once more there was discrepancy between technical ripeness and aromatic ripeness, but we were able to delay picking and see potential alcohol rise further without losing much in the way of acidity.”

Vuille attributed this to both the rapid speed of ripening in the last few days of the growing season, with a 2.5 increase in potential alcohol in the last week to 25 August, and cool nights, which also helped preserve acidity. “There is a high probability that it will be declared as a vintage,” confirmed de Belenet.

Adapting to climate change

Asked about adapting to climate change and the generally warmer conditions, Vuille said: “By using more of certain specific suitable clones (not early ripening ones), adapting the canopy to prevent or restrict sunburn, and by research investigating the attributes of new grape varieties like Voltis.”

He said that Meunier, which has been shown to be more vulnerable to the changing climatic conditions, might disappear from Champagne’s vineyards in the coming years. “There is already evidence of growers not replanting it when renewing their vineyards. It’s very sensitive to botrytis when we have a hot harvest.”

New wines and future plans

Harvest extremes were behind the new launches from Bollinger such as B16 and its predecessors B13 and 2003 by Bollinger, noted de Belenet. Hinting at more such wines to follow, he said: “We need to create more and more such limited editions.

“This year we have been lucky enough to introduce a few innovations with PNTX20 and now B16, plus the new James Bond Special Cuvée and a global deal with Aston Martin. And next spring in March we will be opening the new barrel room holding 5,000 barrels.”

With the new hotel and restaurant opening in Aÿ in 2028, there is a whole series of events planned leading up to the bicentenary in 2029.

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