Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin refers to a champagne house located in Reims, France as well as the name of its premium brand of champagne. The house was founded by a man named Philippe Clicquot-Muiron in 1772. Its brand is credited with helping to establish champagne’s reputation as a drink favored by the higher class bourgeois as well as nobility in Europe. In addition, Veuve Clicquot’s 1811 comet vintage has been theorized as the first real “modern” champagne thanks to the advancements in the méthode champenoise pioneered by Veuve Clicquot through use of the technique of remuage.
Philippe Clicquot-Muiron began the project that would become the champagne house known as Veuve Clicquot in 1772. The name of the house comes from Clicquot-Muiron’s son, François Clicquot. In 1798 he married Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, but he then dies in 1805 and left the house to his widow. The word “veuve” in French is literally “widow.” At the time of François’ death, the company had involvements in wool trading and banking as well as the production of champagne. It was the effort of Madame Clicquot that focused the enterprise solely on the production of champagne.
It was through the Napoleonic Wars where Madame Clicquot began to establish the consumption of her wine by aristocrats in royal courts throughout Europe. Her most notable client was the Russians. In 1866, Madame Clicquot died, but by that time the name Veuve Clicquot was known and respected both as a brand of champagne as well as a house who produced it. The bright yellow labels of the Veuve Clicqot brand are easily recognized by aristocrat and commoner alike and the brand is said to be enjoyed by the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II to this day.
In 1987 the Veuve Clicquot company became a part of the larger Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy group of luxury brands. It also has a controlling interest in the Cloudy Bay Vineyards in New Zealand.
Madame Clicquot’s champagne handling technique revolutionized the industry by making it possible to mass produce sparkling wine. She accomplished this with the help of Antoine de Müller, her cellar master, in the early years of the 19th century. She also invented what is known as the ridding rack. This makes a crucial process called dégorgement more economic as well as efficient. This advancement also involved a process of collecting systematically the sediment and spent yeast of the secondary fermentation in the neck of the bottle through the use of a specialized rack.
This rack looks similar to a wooden desk, but it also contains circular holes allowing the wine to be placed upside down, or sur point. Then, each day someone in the cellar would twist and gently shake the bottle (called remuage) which would in turn encourage the solids in the wine to settle at the bottom. After this step was complete, the cork of the wine was removed, the sediments could then be ejected and a replacement dose of wine was then added. This dose was small and slightly sweetened.