Veuve Clicquot Unfurls New ‘La Grande Dame’ Vintage In Honor Of 250th Anniversary
Sept. 18, 2022: Originally published in Forbes.
Two and a half centuries never looked (or tasted) so good.
This year, Champagne house Veuve Clicquot celebrates a monumental anniversary: its 250-year anniversary since its founding in 1772 (a mere four years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence).
The Clicquot house was originally founded at the end of the 18th century by Phillippe Clicquot, a successful textile merchant looking to diversify his business by selling the wines that were already being made in his hometown of Reims, France. His son, François Clicquot, soon takes over the business with the ambition to turn Champagne, then considered a new product, into a well-known wine. When François unexpectedly dies in 1805, his new bride, Barbe-Nicole, makes the unprecedented decision to keep running the young business, becoming a businesswoman during a time when women weren’t allowed to have their own bank accounts.
“Veuve” is French for “widow,” hence why the then still-new Clicquot wines came to be known as “Veuve Clicquot”, or “Widow Clicquot.” Madame Clicquot went on to spur major innovations in the industry, including inventing the first recorded vintage Champagne and the first rosé Champagne blend.
Against this historical backdrop, Veuve Clicquot, now widely recognizable thanks to its ornate golden label, is celebrating in high style, including by releasing a new vintage, La Grande Dame Rosé 2012, made with the same bold spirit as the house’s namesake. La Grande Dame Rosé 2012 is made with blends from the house’s historic Grand Crus, and is predominantly Pinot Noir (90%). It launched this month.
“You feel the energy of the wine,” Veuve Clicquot chef de caves Didier Mariotti said during a tasting in New York recently. He swirled a glass of the wine and took a sip. “It’s very vibrant. It has a bit of energy. It’s vertical.”
He adds, “For me, to create a great wine, first you need the perfect idea of the structure of the backbone.” By that, Mariotti means that the rosé first begins with an elegant base, in this case, the La Grande Dame 2012, which was released last year. (Rosé needs a little longer to age.) The La Grande Dame Rosé 2012 is just the third release of its kind in the house’s history.
Even over two centuries later, the spiritual leader of the Clicquot maison is never far from the minds of the people who still make wine in her name. “La Grande Dame is a very elegant and delicate blend,” Mariotti, the cellar master, says. “I really have this image of La Grande Dame arriving in a room and . . . She’s tall. She’s very elegant. She's quite shy, she doesn’t want to talk to a lot of people. You have to go talk to her, you have to discover her. But she deserves it in a way. You have to be very respectful and if you are respectful, then she will start to open up and deliver complexity and beauty in a way.”
Surveying the wines in front of him, Mariotti says, “For me, wine is like this. You really need to pay attention to the wine. We really want to express something very vertical, full of energy but also very delicate and very elegant.”
In addition to releasing La Grande Dame Rosé 2012, Veuve Clicquot is hosting multiple glamorous events this fall, including a global traveling exhibition, Solaire Culture, which will showcase the brand’s heritage while also spotlighting original work by ten renowned female artists, including Yayoi Kusama. The exhibition launches in Los Angeles on Oct. 26, and will be on display through Nov. 17.