First vintage champagne

The world’s first vintage champagne was made in 1810, just outside the city of Reims in northeastern France, the unofficial capital of the Champagne region.

Although champagne had already been around for well over a century, it had been crafted the traditional way up until then, by blending different wines from different years together to ensure consistency. No one had considered making and marketing it from grapes harvested in a single year before.

What made it even more daring was that it had been created and innovated by a woman. And not just any woman. A bright, bold, business-savvy trailblazing widow (‘veuve’ in French) called Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, forever immortalised as Veuve Clicquot.

Our heroine was born into a wealthy Reims family on 16th December 1777, the daughter of wonderfully named Ponce Ponsardin (known as Nicolas and later Baron Ponsardin) and Jeanne Huart Le Tertre.

Ponce Ponsardin, Barbe-Nicole's father

The family were well-known and well-respected wool and textile manufacturers, and her father had plenty of political privileges and aristocratic influence – two years previously he was part of the city council that helped plan Louis XVI’s coronation celebrations at Reims Cathedral.

There are very few personal details about Barbe-Nicole that survive from her childhood, testament to the lowly status of women of the era. We have glimpses only: she was very petite, with grey eyes and strawberry-blond hair. She had a younger brother and sister, and grew up in a mansion that’s become the city’s Chamber of Commerce building today. 

In June 1789, aged 11 she was sent to St Pierre-les-Dames, Reim’s prestigious royal convent school, which boasted Mary Queen of Scots as a former pupil. It should have been an intellectual safe haven, but the French Revolution broke out a month later with the storming of the Bastille 90 miles away in Paris. Chaos immediately ensued, with irate mobs taking to the streets of Reims demanding freedom and equality – which suddenly meant being an aristocrat wasn’t such a great look.

Her father immediately took two very quick but important decisions. The first was to send the family’s dressmaker to the wealthy school, who was said to have dressed Barbe-Nicole up as a peasant to safely usher her home. The second was more drastic. He decided to become a revolutionary himself, jumping in with two stockinged feet. He went from lifelong royalist to Jacobin (a member of the Jacobin Club) overnight, which loudly called for extreme egalitarianism and the abolition of the monarchy.

It was an incredibly bold but shrewd move that not only saw his family survive but prosper in those dark and turbulent days. It was a dangerous high wire act that allowed him both to keep his wealth but also proclaim himself a man of the people!   

For 10 years, the Ponsardin family lived this political and societal double life – and Barbe-Nicole’s father clearly believed the only way of increasing his status was to marry his daughter well. One of their biggest business competitors in Reims region was the neighbouring Clicquot family, themselves textile merchants but with a long-standing side hustle in wine broking. And so, it was duly ‘arranged’ (as was common practice) that Barbe-Nicole, aged 21, and François Clicquot, aged 24, would be married – not only a strategic union of business concerns but also a surprising union of minds. By some miracle, they actually seemed to like each other too.  

They were married on 10th June 1798 and threw themselves into the wine business wholeheartedly, something François was very passionate about. He had (briefly) served in the French military during the Revolutionary Wars but his role had been more administrative than combative – he was in logistics, particularly import and export, moving goods and supplies around war-torn France efficiently – a key skillset needed for wine distribution. The happy couple had been, rather prophetically, gifted a small vineyard as a wedding present by Philippe, François’ father, which fuelled their wine-making dream even more.     

Over the next few years, they built up the burgeoning business, shipping local wines and champagnes in bottles and casks to whoever wasn’t fighting France at the time. After initial success, primarily thanks to Francois’ agent Louis Bohne (a German living in Switzerland selling champagne to the UK), the endless conflicts took their toll (there were a lot, including, War of the First Coalition, War of the Second Coalition then the omnishambles of the Napoleonic Wars…).

François didn’t take the downturn well. Accounts from the time tell us he had huge mood swings and severe bouts of depression, and it’s rumoured he suffered from what’s now known as bipolar disorder. In October 1805, just seven years after their marriage, François died after a short illness. A lot of people claim it was suicide, which has some merit due to his fragile mental health, but it’s been broadly attributed to typhoid – or a similar fever. He was dead within 12 days of contracting it, leaving Barbe-Nicole a widow at the age of 27 with a daughter of seven.

The families were naturally devastated. Barbe-Nicole had lost her life partner. Philippe had lost his beloved son and became hell bent on terminating the failing wine business. But this is where things became really interesting – and tell us a lot about the strength, resolve and fearlessness of Barbe-Nicole. Instead of retreating into respectable widowhood, as was her right, she audaciously pledged to continue the business on her own – something unheard of for a lady of her privilege and standing.  

To give you an idea of a French woman’s status in 1805, they didn’t have the right to vote (even known as ‘passive citizens’). They couldn’t go to university. They couldn’t own a property without their husband's consent. They couldn’t really get a divorce. They couldn’t even open a bank account in their own name. This was all ‘legal’ thanks to The Code Napoléon, a comprehensive civil law code established in France in 1804 under Napoleon. But fortunately for us, and champagne lovers all over the world, there was a flaw in the system.

The prohibitions against women in business, of which there were a lot, did not extend to widows. The Code explicitly stated women had to be subject to their husbands – widows though, without that constraint, had the freedom to make their own financial and legal decisions. 

But first, Barbe-Nicole had to win over her sceptical father-in-law. He grudgingly agreed to her proposition and eventually even invested a further 30,000 francs (a staggering £3.3 million today) in the new venture – she must have sold it well! But he had terms. He insisted she work with a more experienced winemaker for four years, so she could fully understand the day-to-day problems of the business. And so, she met Alexandre Fourneaux, an established winemaker particularly well-known for his art in blending wines, or assemblage, and together they established a new business called Veuve Clicquot Fourneaux & Co. in 1806, just a year after François’s death.

What’s interesting is the insistence on ‘Veuve’ in the brand’s name. There was no legal requirement to do so, but perhaps it was her way of constantly and publicly reminding the authorities of her right to own a business. (On a side note, the nickname ‘la veuve’ had been given to the guillotine during the French Revolution, essentially translating as ‘widow maker’).

In the early 1800s, wine and champagne bottles were not branded like they are today. There were no labels stuck on – so they could only be distinguished by the symbology or marks on the cork. Early Veuve Clicquot corks had an anchor symbol, which represented peace or stability in the storms of life, an apt choice for what was to follow.

The early years were rough. Napoleon had been crowned Emperor of France and immediately sought to invade England. This caused Russia, Austria & Sweden to join the British and declare war on France. In response, Napoleon established punitive trade restrictions (the Continental Blockade) on everyone who opposed him, starting in 1806. Not good news for a wine distributer looking for new markets, so Barbe-Nicole came up with a ridiculously risky plan.

She sent 50,000 bottles of champagne from France to Amsterdam with salesman Louis Bohne – and the idea was he would sell them on in Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. Although the wines arrived safely in Amsterdam, the city was immediately put into lockdown, so the bottles were suddenly stranded and impounded, then stored in a dank port-side warehouse, where they slowly deteriorated.

​Charles Hartmann, one of Veuve Clicquot’s agents sent to Amsterdam to assess the dire situation, described it in a letter back to Barbe-Nicole: ​

"I prayed to the Good Lord to let me find our wines in such a way that I could send you good news, but my prayers were not at all answered. I opened the first case with trembling hands... I took out a bottle, trembling I removed the straw and tissue paper, but rather than the clear and brilliant wine that I had hoped for, I saw nothing but a deposit like a finger that I could not detach without shaking the bottle for a full minute."

Of the 50,000 bottles sent, only a handful were deemed good enough for sale by September. It was a catastrophic loss. A business-ruining loss. Pivoting, she sent Louis Bohne to establish new customers in Prussia and then Russia, but she’d misjudged the economic climate, demand and appetite for a luxury champagne – and French products weren’t exactly being viewed with any great fondness thanks to Napoleon. Louis was accused of being a spy in Russia in 1807 and escorted out.

Louis Bohne, Veuve Clicquot agent

Her business partner Fourneaux began seriously distancing himself (later establishing the Tattinger brand with his son). On top of everything, the harvests from 1806-1809 weren’t great either, not up to the standard she had started to demand. Things were looking grim for Barbe-Nicole. She ended up having to lay off every salesman except Louis and sell her jewellery to pay the winemakers on her estate. 

But then came 1810.

Not a woman to give up easily, Barbe-Nicole renamed the company Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, and double downed on her commitment to quality. At last, she got a harvest she could work with. We know from historical data that it was actually a fairly poor weather year – persistent rainfall led to saturated soils and challenging growing conditions, while a hard late April frost devastated young buds on lots of her vines. It didn’t sound promising – but she firmly believed that grapes harvested in certain plots still held a unique and unrivalled quality. Her business intuition told her she must showcase this scarce but superior yield.

So that’s what she did. Rather than blending the wine, like everyone else did, she defied convention by bottling and marketing a champagne made entirely from the 1810 harvest. It became the first documented vintage champagne, labelled with the year, a practice never seen before in the category. She didn’t know it immediately, but she’d just set a new luxury standard in champagne.

Then she got a bit more luck. The following year, the cosmos finally took a shine to her. The grape harvest was phenomenal and bountiful – the best in a decade. And it was made even more special by being the year of the Great Comet, known as Napoleon’s Comet, (a.k.a. C/1811 F1). Discovered by Honoré Flaugergues, a French amateur astronomer, the comet’s streak was visible to the naked eye all around the world for over 250 days (throughout the growing season). It was immortalised in all sorts of popular culture at the time, including William Blake sketches and mentions in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and ‘comet vintages’ were later mentioned in works by Charles Dickens. Prophets even said the comet predicted Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.

 As an entrepreneurial and visionary businesswoman, Barbe-Nicole grabbed this marketing opportunity with both hands. She transformed the harvest into her second vintage and called it ‘Le Vin de la Comète’.         

She added a star symbol to the cork to commemorate the vintage, and in a letter to an associate, she referred to her new branding as: “the simplicity that I intend not to part with also has its elegance, and it will mark the difference of my bottles, since the others will be the opposite.”

This vintage is often considered the first truly modern champagne, thanks to its crystal-clear clarity, sharper taste and finer bubbles – which she’d achieved through another of her ingenious inventions called the ‘riddling table’ or remuage. It was a slanted wooden rack with holes that allowed the bottles to be placed upside down and be turned easily by hand. This allowed the sediment to be collected effortlessly in the neck, then removed (disgorgement), drastically improving the clarity and quality of every bottle.

The champagne was a triumph, creating an essential new tradition for all future winemakers. But Barbe-Nicole’s troubles weren’t behind her. The geo-political situation was still absurdly unstable, with Napoleon’s ill-fated march to Russia and the subsequent War of the Sixth Coalition, which saw allied forces invade France in 1814 to drive the emperor into exile on Elba. For Barbe-Nicole, this meant she also had to deal with thirsty Russian soldiers occupying Reims with a license to loot.

“Everything is going badly,” she wrote a friend. “I have been occupied for so many days with walling up my cellars, but I know full well that this will not prevent them from being robbed and pillaged. If so, I am ruined.”      

But she wasn’t ruined. She took a forward-thinking approach to the situation, giving the marauding soldiers an unexpected taste of the high life instead with as many free samples as they could manage. Her strategy was simple – they’d eventually go home to Russia with nothing but praise for her champagne, a modern-day word of mouth viral advertising campaign. It’s around this time she’s said to have said the famous line: “Today they drink; Tomorrow they will pay!”. Wisely, she kept her 1811 comet wine safely hidden away though.  

With news of Napoleon’s retreat and subsequent defeat, she made her boldest move yet. On 6th June 1814, she and Louis secretly chartered their own ship in Le Havre at an exorbitant price and filled its hold with 10,500 bottles of her 1811 comet vintage – the best she’d ever made. It was a gamble. If anything happened, she would go bankrupt. The ports were still blockaded but she understood that whoever got to Russia first would be the one to corner the market in a country ready to celebrate.

The ship made it to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) safely – before any of her competitors knew it was even possible to start trading again – and everything changed for Barbe-Nicole and the Veuve Clicquot brand. Louis was besieged at the ports by Russians begging to buy their wine at prices they could only dream of. Overnight, they’d become a phenomenon; a sensation – the first champagne brand to capture and dominate a foreign market. When another shipment of champagne later reached St. Petersburg, Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia, Tsar Alexander I's brother, declared that Veuve Clicquot champagne would be the only kind he would drink. The Imperial Court lapped it up, asking for it by name, the perfect way to honour their military victories. 

Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia

In a letter back to France, Louis gushed: “Your judicious manner of operating, your excellent wine, and that marvellous similarity of our ideas, which produced the most splendid unity and action and execution–we did it well, and I give a million thanks to the bounty of the divine Providence who saw fit to make me one of his instruments in your future well-being – and no trials in the world will stop me from doing it again, to justify the unlimited confidence you have placed in me, which has produced such happy results. Certainly, you merit all the glory possible after all your misfortunes, your perseverance, and your obvious talents.”

The rest is history. Today, Veuve Clicquot is renowned around the world as a symbol of quality, desire and celebration. A beacon of luxury embraced by an elite class and later championed in poems written by Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, Jules Verne, Marcel Proust and numerous artists.

By refusing to cut corners, by refusing to dilute her standards, by refusing to back down in a man’s world – even in the face of war, political turmoil and poor harvests – Barbe-Nicole built not just a champagne brand, but a global legacy. She was an instinctive and ingenious business owner and marketer. Although rarely leaving Reims, she was a prolific letter writer – sending and receiving a staggering 100,000 letters over her stewardship (that’s around eight letters a day for 36 years straight).   

Madame Clicquot died on 29th July 1866 aged 89, laid to rest in a small mausoleum in the Reims Northern Cemetery. Truly La Grande Dame de la Champagne.

It seems fitting to end on another of her quotes, as meaningful and visionary as ever.

“The world is in perpetual motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligence direct your life. Act with audacity.”