Champagne Thiénot Cuvée Stanislas Blanc de Blancs 2008

Having spent many years as a broker between the Champagne growers and the Grand Houses, Alain Thiénot, bought vineyards and set up his own House in 1985. The original house in the Rue des Moissons, in the middle of Reims, with a warren of chalk cellars, was soon outgrown and a purpose-built winery was built just outside the city. The cellars at Rue de Moissons are still used to age and hand riddle the bottles. The Estate is now run by the charismatic Stanislas Thienot and his sister Garance, with guidance from cellar master and viticulturist Nicolas Uriel. Thiénot source about 50% of their fruit from their own vineyards, higher than the average, mostly from Grand and Premier cru villages in the Montagne de Reims and the Côte de Blancs.   

The Cuvée Stanislas, one of the three wines in their Family Collection, is 100% Chardonnay sourced from 90% Grand Cru villages. Like all their wines it undergoes its malolactic fermentation before bottling in 2009 and then lies in the deep cold damp cellars of the Rue de Moissons, this bottling was disgorged in 2022, so with 13 years aging this is a stunning glass of Champagne, one of the very best Blanc de Blancs on the market.

 It was interesting but not surprising that when the famous Australian winery, Penfolds decided to create a Champagne it was Thiénot door they knocked on, drawing on Nicholas Uriels experience and Thiénots vineyards in the grand cru village of Ay.