Veuve Clicquot

History

1. 1772

   Philippe Clicquot's anchor

   Philippe Clicquot, a cloth merchant and banker from Reims who also owned vineyards, founded a wine business in 1772. He was one of the first to export Champagne, and the first bottles went to Venice. He shipped 4,000 to 7,000 bottles a year, because cloth was still the main business. From 1798 Clicquot corks were marked with an anchor, a symbol of hope and prosperity.

2. 1805

   Widowed at 27

   In 1798 Philippe's son François married Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the daughter of a cloth manufacturer and later mayor of Reims. François built sales up to 60,000 bottles in 1804 and hired the travelling salesman Louis Bohne. On 23 October 1805 he died after a few days of fever. His father wanted to wind up the firm, but the 27-year-old widow persuaded him to give her a chance. The Napoleonic Code denied women the right to run a business, but widows were an exception.

3. 1810

   The first vintage

   After an apprenticeship with the wine merchant Alexandre Fourneaux, in 1810 Barbe-Nicole founded her own firm, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. That same year she made the first known vintage Champagne, solely from wines of the 1810 harvest. A year later a great comet shone in the sky for many months, and the widow named the 1811 vintage “the comet wine” and marked its corks with a star.

4. 1814

   A ship to Königsberg

   The Napoleonic Wars closed the seas, and the Tsar banned imports of French wine in bottles. Clicquot's people are said to have smuggled Champagne into Russia in coffee barrels. In June 1814, before her competitors believed in peace, the widow sent a Dutch ship to Königsberg with 10,550 bottles, including the famous 1811 vintage. The wine sold out in no time; a week later a second shipment of 12,780 bottles sailed from Rouen. Overnight the Clicquot name became famous throughout Russia.

5. 1816-1818

   The riddling table and rosé

   Champagne with yeast sediment was cloudy, and decanting it from bottle to bottle ruined the wine. In 1816 Barbe-Nicole and her cellar master Antoine de Müller invented the riddling table: a board with holes in which the bottles stand neck down and are turned every day until the sediment collects by the cork. Every Champagne house adopted the method. In 1818, instead of colouring Champagne with elderberry juice, she added red wine from her own vineyards in Bouzy and made the first blended rosé Champagne.

6. 1866-1877

   The passing of the Grande Dame

   Madame Clicquot died on 29 July 1866 at the Château de Boursault, aged 88. In her lifetime sales grew from 17,000 bottles in 1811 to 750,000 a year. The firm was taken over by her partner Édouard Werlé, who kept the name. From 1876 the house put a yellow label on its bottles, registered as a trademark a year later.

7. 1909-2026

   Crayères, war and LVMH

   In 1909 Bertrand de Mun bought old chalk quarries beneath the Saint-Nicaise hill. During the First World War more than a thousand people sheltered in them; a hospital and a chapel operated there, and Red Cross signs can still be seen on the walls. In 1986 the house was bought by Louis Vuitton, and a year later Veuve Clicquot became part of LVMH. In 2001 Cécile Bonnefond became the first woman to head the house since the widow. Since 2020 the cellars have been run by Didier Mariotti, and since October 2025 the president has been Thomas Mulliez, who replaced Jean-Marc Gallot.

People

Curiosities

1. In Russia “kliko” became a colloquial word for good Champagne. Pushkin mentions “the widow Clicquot” in “Eugene Onegin”, and Gogol's Nozdryov in “Dead Souls” boasts of “kliko-matradura”, or “double Clicquot”. source
2. anecdote When the 1814 shipment arrived, the Tsar's brother, Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, is said to have declared that he would drink no wine other than Veuve Clicquot. Other accounts attribute these words to Alexander I himself. source
3. anecdote When the Russians occupied Reims in 1814 and drank Champagne from the cellars, Madame Clicquot is said to have remarked: “Today they drink, tomorrow they will pay”. It is a family anecdote that cannot be verified. source
4. In 2010 Finnish divers found 168 bottles of Champagne from the 1840s on the bed of the Baltic off the Åland Islands, including several dozen Veuve Clicquot. The wine had around 150 g of sugar per litre, in keeping with the sweet tastes of the period. In 2011 one bottle sold at auction for 30,000 euros. source
5. In 2014 the house sank 300 bottles and 50 magnums at the site of the Baltic wreck. They are to lie there for 40 years and will then be compared with the same wines aged in the cellars in Reims. source
6. In 2008 an unopened bottle of 1893 Veuve Clicquot in perfect condition was found in a sideboard at Torosay Castle on the Scottish island of Mull. It is the oldest yellow-label bottle in the house collection, on display in Reims. source
7. In 1987 divers recovered cases of Veuve Clicquot from the wreck of the steamer Regina, sunk in Lake Huron in 1913. The Champagne still fizzed, and the archaeologist leading the expedition described it as “rather dark, but excellent in taste”. source
8. In a portrait by Léon Cogniet from around 1860, Madame Clicquot sits with her great-granddaughter Anne de Rochechouart-Mortemart, the future Duchesse d'Uzès, against the backdrop of the Château de Boursault. source
9. The widow was also a philanthropist: she founded a home for the elderly, a relief fund and schools in Reims, and gave Épernay, which was short of water, the springs on her estate at Boursault. source