November 21, Champagne to Burgundy

This morning, we got up early and left the Hotel Briqueterie en route for the town of Taissy, where we were scheduled to meet with the winemaker Stanislaus Thienot of the cutting edge Thienot Champagne House. 

We drove around the center of Reims to a suburban industrial park, no castles, no centuries- old underground caves, no tourist groups, no tour guide. Just us, and the winemaker’s son, Stanislaus. Here he is routing around in the winery for some fresh barely- fermenting wines for us to try; two pinot noirs, two chardonnays and a pinot meunier, mostly all spitters as they say in the apple world. 

The fact that a winemaker can actually taste at this stage and predict is pure wizardry. Here's Darren responding.

An extremely gracious, young man, and thoroughly knowledgeable about the Champagne Industry here in Champagne; who are the leaders, what are the trends, what has the champagne been doing for the last 20 years and what is Thienot Champagne now poised to do with their stuff. Here's a pic of me and Stan, he's the son of the winemaker.

The winery was an impressive, completely up-to-date facility, super clean and with dozens of vats of varying sizes split into two primary sections; one section of more and smaller vats for the more precisely and more diversely blended Thienot (winemaker) labels, and one section of larger vats for the more classic Canard du.... . Thienot Champagne House is also the owner of Joseph Perrier Winery, a centuries old winery in the neighboring town of Chalons where we visited the day before. 

We sampled a flat, primary -fermentation-complete Chardonnay, a second-phase malolactic fermentation pinot noir, and two separate Pinot Meuniets of dramatically different character, none of it filtered or fined. all of it very young and not ready for the bottle, all of it to give us an idea of the enormous skill of the chef du cave in predicting what qualities will emerge years down the line from these incredibly sour, sharp and undrinkable juices.

We talked of vinyard politics, philosophy of yield and just about every thing I could imagine about the art and business of making champagne. None of the 3rd in-the-bottle fermentation takes place there in the facility. They do all of that at his father Alain’s house underneath the house. 

Stan then took us to the tasting room to sample some of the finished product. I was astonished at what happened. We bought some to bring along on our trip, and got contact info for the US distributor in San Francisco. 

Then drove off wishing Stan a warm farewell. Had some lunch on “Le Petit Seine” a riverboat turned restaurant and jazz club on the outskirts of Reims, before hitting the road for Vezelay. Got to Vezelay after sundown, visited some antique shops and the basilica.

Here's the basilica at Vezelay, shot at night with no flash?

 Here's a bag of garbage in front of the basilica at Vezelay, a very special bag of garbage, shot with a flash.

Then headed off for Nolay de Change. We have a house here called Le Pigeonniere, because they bred pigeons here for carrying messages and for the meat.

We had the whole house to ourself. They put the bed together but still gave us separate comforters. Catholic country.

Here's the actual pigeon house they named the place for.

Had dinner at the eatery up the block and then turned the manager on to some of the leftovers from the Thienot experience. Turns out our manager is a grapegrower himself and offered us some of the Sparkling Burgundy White he grows the grapes for. It wasn’t good. But I was grateful anyway and happy to chat a bit before hitting the sauna back here at the pigeon roost. Off to bed now. Later!