Veuve Clicquot
Known as “La grande dama della Champagne“, Barbe Nicole Ponsardin, Madame Clicquot, made her winery famous with the name Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin. Spouse of Philippe Clicquot-Muiron, when she was widowed in 1805 at the age of 27, Madame Clicquot took over the reins of the family business and became its driving force, faithful to the maxim: "Only one quality, the very first ". Her infallible flair led her to dominate exports to the rich and vast class of Russian aristocrats and to make her company one of the most important and famous in Champagne.
Le “veuve” (widow) ran the company with great determination, introducing it to new markets and introducing revolutionary processes in the traditional champenoise method. Together with the cellar manager, she also faced the problem of the deposit that formed in the bottles after the second fermentation and devised the remuage sur pupitres system, which allowed to purify the wine from the lees, a process that is still done today.
In 1818 Madame Clicquot had the intuition to create the first Champagne Rosé produced from blended grapes, combining red wines with still white wines and giving life to a rosé with a great personality. Upon her death in 1866, Madame Clicquot had already managed to place the Champagne region on the map of the main wine districts and to raise the name of her product par excellence, since then known worldwide for its excellent quality.
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne has a thriving and world-renowned past. In the French maison, champagne is produced in over 390 vineyards located throughout the region, of which a high percentage is present in the most suitable plots (12 Grand Cru and 20 Premier Cru). THE
processes of creation of this grandiose product still take place today in the famous gypsum-covered cellars, which became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2015, located near Reims and open to the public. In the quarries the vinification process takes place in steel, or in some cases through malolactic fermentation in small wooden barrels, calibrating each procedure and inserting percentages of excellent reserve wines in the cuveè.