2015 Ayala Blanc de Blancs Brut Champagne 750 ml

Champagne’s 2015 season, in the words of one famous house’s Chef de Cave, was almost “too good.” 

Dry conditions and warm temperatures kept disease, mildew, and botrytis pressure down. Yields were down a touch, but the fruit that came in was first class, and had winemakers all over the region dreaming of their top cuvées.

At Champagne Ayala, the 150-year-old house Bollinger had acquired a decade earlier, star 39-year-old Cellar Master Caroline Latrive brought in pristine Côte des Blancs Chardonnay from the Grand Cru villages of Cramant, Chouilly, and Mesnil-sur-Oger, plus the Premier Cru villages of Cuis and Grauves. 

She knew she had the goods… but vintage Champagne is a long game. After fermenting in stainless steel, Latrive laid the wine down, letting the yeast cells go to work on the crisp Chardonnay, imbuing it with toasty complexity, roundness, and intensity. The years went by—three, four, five—but Latrive made no moves. 

Finally, after six years, she brought the 2015 Ayala Blanc de Blancs up from the cellar. Fireworks. Pale lemon-green with a bead of ultra-fine bubbles, it’s bursting with aromas of citrus, chalk, jasmine, and Honeycrisp apple. Chiseled and focused on the palate, it’s dry and light on its feet, with a long, energetic finish. 

A bottle found its way to the folks at Wine Enthusiast, and they awarded it 94 points, and made it the only Champagne on the 2021 Enthusiast 100. This bottle is always a fast sell-out at Wine Access, and we’re thrilled to have scored the few cases we did. We know everyone who gets their hands on a bottle will feel the same.