Thienot Grande Cuvee Alain Thienot 1999
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Enjoy with white buttered sole, monkfish or grilled sea bass.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Offers a fine balance between rich, smoky nut and coffee character and flavors of ripe pear, pineapple, lemon meringue and ground ginger, with well-meshed, firm acidity. A hint of coffee liqueur shows on the creamy finish. Drink now through 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
A wine that is showing a toasty, mature view of the 1999 vintage. There are flavors of soft almonds, a smooth texture and a final, soft richness. While this is unlikely to develop much further, it is an impressive, ripe, food-friendly wine.
Champagne Thiénot symbolizes the very essence of Champange and Bordeaux, France with its exclusive, global and contemporary profile. For 25 years, Alain Thiénot has built the foundations for a new champagne house, with the greatest respect for a number of core values: quality, modernity and luxury, values which have enabled the vineyards to show their true potential.
The Thiénot approach is family-orientated, where modernity combines with a respect for tradition, creativity meets quality, and where passion unites with exacting standards.
Champagne is an art without compromise. The Thiénot approach combines individuality, flair and selectiveness to create a unique style: Finesse, elegance and subtlety. This approach has helped Champagne Thiénot gain international stature, uniting prestige and innovation.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Associated with luxury, celebration, and romance, the region, Champagne, is home to the world’s most prized sparkling wine. In order to bear the label, ‘Champagne’, a sparkling wine must originate from this northeastern region of France—called Champagne—and adhere to strict quality standards. Made up of the three towns Reims, Épernay, and Aÿ, it was here that the traditional method of sparkling wine production was both invented and perfected, birthing a winemaking technique as well as a flavor profile that is now emulated worldwide.
Well-drained, limestone and chalky soil defines much of the region, which lend a mineral component to its wines. Champagne’s cold, continental climate promotes ample acidity in its grapes but weather differences from year to year can create significant variation between vintages. While vintage Champagnes are produced in exceptional years, non-vintage cuvées are produced annually from a blend of several years in order to produce Champagnes that maintain a consistent house style.
With nearly negligible exceptions, . These can be blended together or bottled as individual varietal Champagnes, depending on the final style of wine desired. Chardonnay, the only white variety, contributes freshness, elegance, lively acidity and notes of citrus, orchard fruit and white flowers. Pinot Noir and its relative Pinot Meunier, provide the backbone to many blends, adding structure, body and supple red fruit flavors. Wines with a large proportion of Pinot Meunier will be ready to drink earlier, while Pinot Noir contributes to longevity. Whether it is white or rosé, most Champagne is made from a blend of red and white grapes—and uniquely, rosé is often produce by blending together red and white wine. A Champagne made exclusively from Chardonnay will be labeled as ‘blanc de blancs,’ while ones comprised of only red grapes are called ‘blanc de noirs.’