Madame was the queen of very fine Champagne

Jan 1 2010 by Helen Savage, The Journal

I'M deeply unconvinced by lists of the top 10 films, books, records, holiday destinations or wines. They always seem to leave out my favourites. That said, any reasonable list of the great Champagne houses would have to include Veuve Clicquot.

The widow herself, Barbe-Nicole nee Ponsardin rivals Dom Perignon as the best-known personality in the history of Champagne, almost instantly recognisable in a Queen Victoria-like pose (or is it Les Dawson?), in a painting that hangs in her delightful old country house at Verzy, near Reims.

And then there’s the distinctive yellow (or is it apricot?) of the labels, registered in 1877 and fiercely protected ever since. Above all, the wine itself is fabulous – by any standards.

The secret of fine Champagne rests in the quality of the base wines used to make up its blend. The great houses each pride themselves on achieving a recognisable house style, consistent, as far as nature allows, from year to year.

Veuve Clicquot are fortunate to own a massive 500 hectares of vines – enough to supply about 30% of their needs and then have contracts with around 1,000 different grape growers for the rest. Some 98% of the grapes are from vineyards in the best Grand Cru and Premier Cru sites.

In November, I had the privilege of tasting some of the main elements of the blend, mostly from the very good 2008 harvest. Floriane Eznack, one of the house’s team of winemakers, guided me through them at their main cellars in Reims.

We then tasted the finished blend, a carefully-crafted mix of three grape varieties (57% Pinot Noir, 17% Pinot Meunier – both black grapes – and 26% Chardonnay) that includes 30% of older reserve wines from every vintage from 2000-07 and even a tiny drop of 1993.

The powerful, complex aroma of the reserve wines dominates the blend at this stage, but after the second fermentation in each bottle takes place to produce the all- important bubbles, followed by 30 months’ ageing, before being riddled to remove the unwanted sediment (a process said to have been invented by the Widow Clicquot herself) and a final parting shot of 10 grams per litre of sweetening (leaving the Champagne still very Brut), the richness of the reserve wines will have melted delectably into the mineral, almost salty character of the younger base wine.

“Vintage wines aren’t our main aim,” says Floriane. The Veuve Clicquot team pride themselves instead in producing the non-vintage ‘Yellow Label’ Brut to a consistently high level of quality. More specifically, she said, “We’re looking for richness and good mineral complexity.”

And every one of the 11 million bottles that they make each year (the total production of the house is 12 million bottles) delivers exactly that. You can find it in most supermarkets – even, sometimes, on special offer, as at Waitrose (until Tuesday) for £26.39.

Another Veuve Clicquot speciality is rosé. They claim to have been the first house to ship rosé, back in the days of Madame Clicquot herself. The present version is based, Floriane told me, on the Yellow Label Brut, but includes a goodly dollop of red wine from the prime and deliciously- named village of Bouzy.

A palish salmon pink, it shows a mix of strawberry and peachy aromas mixed with fresh brioche and is soft, ripe and rich. Waitrose is again, perhaps, the best bet, at just under £40 a throw.

But, of course, Veuve Clicquot also make magnificent vintage wines. The luxury Cuvée ‘La Grande Dame’, a vintage wine, is made only in the very finest years.