The prestigious vintage of the Clicquot house
The Grande Dame is the symbol of what the Veuve Clicquot champagne house knows how to do best. It is a cuvée that is totally focused on purity, minerality and complexity. It is a champagne which is the fruit of the meticulous blend of the 8 great historic terroirs of the house, namely Verzy, Verzenay, Bouzy, Ambonnay, Aÿ for pinot noir and Mesnil sur Oger, Oger and Avize for chardonnay. However, each vintage of La Grande Dame does not necessarily include these 8 crus, but sometimes only 5 or 6. It is a champagne which spends a minimum of 7 years in the cellars of the house, but which retains a great freshness, a great youth like Madame Clicquot.
The elegance of Madame Clicquot
It was in 1972, on the bicentenary of her birth, that the Clicquot house decided to pay tribute to Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin by dedicating a prestigious cuvée to him. The name of the cuvée is obvious: La Grande Dame. For its first edition, the 1962 vintage was chosen. A first Grande Dame produced in extremely small quantities. It was only from the second bottle, the Vintage 1966, that La Grande Dame was distributed more consistently around the world. It was in 1985 that the house decided to give this special bottle to its prestigious cuvée, a bottle with Gironde shapes.
All Veuve Clicquot
Produced in a relatively confidential manner (350,000 bottles), La Grande Dame cuvée is considered the jewel of the house, it is a champagne that is cherished by the cellar masters who have followed one another at its bedside. They have crafted an elegant, pure and complex cuvée. The 2004 vintage, which has just succeeded the 1998, perfectly embodies this challenge and this desire. Some may be surprised not to see La Grande Dame presented in the 2002 vintage, certainly one of the finest of the past decade. But Dominique Demarville, Cellar Master of the Veuve Clicquot champagne house, explains that this harvest was very powerful, almost opulent, a style far removed from that of La Grande Dame. Substantial stocks in previous vintages also encouraged the house to ignore this vintage.
