The Stanislas 2011 cuvée, crafted by Thiénot, is a vintage champagne. Here, time joins forces with great white wines to bring together maturity, freshness and generosity in perfect harmony.
It opens on notes of citrus, white-fleshed fruit and a touch of white blossom, before sliding towards honey, woodland undergrowth and toasted notes. The palate stands out for its airy, mineral-driven character, lending it great lightness and freshness.
This is a bottle you can pour as an aperitif, alongside smoked salmon blinis for example, before bringing it to the table with a Bresse chicken. Only 500 magnums of this cuvée were produced.
Le Terroir
The Stanislas 2011 cuvée is a Blanc de Blancs, meaning it is crafted entirely from Chardonnay.
These Chardonnay grapes come from vines classified Premier Cru, a ranking that places their terroir among the most highly regarded in Champagne, where Thiénot tends its vines. This classification rests on a long-standing recognition of the quality of grapes grown on these plots, a benchmark of excellence that guarantees a terroir especially suited to revealing the full finesse of Chardonnay. The soil and subsoil of these vines give the grapes balanced growing conditions that encourage slow, even ripening, essential to building the structure of the wine.
On this terroir, Chardonnay lends the wine a fine tension and remarkable precision on the palate.
La vinification
Nicolas Uriel, Thiénot's cellar master, chose to vinify this 2011 Chardonnay entirely in stainless steel tanks, to preserve the purity of the fruit without adding any oaky notes. Malolactic fermentation ran its full course, softening the grape's natural acidity and lending a velvety mouthfeel. The wine was then bottled in September 2012 to begin its second fermentation.
The dosage was set at 4 g/L, placing this cuvée in the Extra Brut category: a dry style that lets the fruit express itself without any noticeable sweetness, refining the texture into a taut, precise sensation. This disciplined approach to dosage reflects Maison Thiénot's ambition to craft a white champagne of real character, true to the freshness of the 2011 vintage.
Le millésime 2011
A warm, dry spring brought an exceptionally early awakening to the vines of Champagne in 2011, unseen since 1822. A cooler, wetter July slowed this early start, before a warmer end to summer relaunched ripening. Harvest began as early as mid-August, yielding Chardonnay with well-preserved acidity, despite lower yields than expected. This contrasting climate shaped grapes that were ripe yet lively, a character you'll find in the glass: the Stanislas 2011 cuvée reveals a fresh, taut structure, carried by a touch of fruity ripeness. A vintage that combines earliness and tension, a true signature of the 2011 character in Champagne.
