Thiénot Champagne Brut

Thiénot's Champagne Brut is born in the heart of the Champagne vineyards, in north-eastern France, where the house is based in Reims. This non-vintage cuvée draws each year on the best that Champagne has to offer, between slopes and chalky plains. The climate, both oceanic and continental, imposes slow ripening, while the chalk subsoil regulates the vines' water supply and gives the wines their characteristic finesse, tension and freshness.

The Brut blends Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier from a base harvest topped up with more than half reserve wines from several years. The wines go through full malolactic fermentation before bottling and second fermentation in bottle. The cuvée then ages for around four years in the house's cellars before a measured brut dosage. The jetting method, which the house pioneered, makes it possible to produce wines with very little sulphite.

This wine reveals notes of green apple, pear, juicy peach, mirabelle plum, lemon, hawthorn, brioche and fresh almond. Orchard and yellow fruit open a powerful nose, extended by a floral touch and delicate pastry nuances. The palate is round, fresh and balanced, enlivened by a lively yet very fine mousse, before a clean, thirst-quenching finish.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.