French winemaker Marie Charlemagne visits Malaysia for first time to join Veuve Clicquot’s 250th anniversary KL celebrations
KUALA LUMPUR, May 24 — She’s hot, descended from royalty and one of three female winemakers in a team of ten from French champagne house Veuve Clicquot.
“We don’t ask ourselves if we like it,” said Marie Charlemagne, referring to the best part of her job, which is blind-tasting 24 wine samples every morning.
“We ask, is it worthy of Clicquot?” continued the 27-year-old, whose elegant good looks remind you of Mission Impossible 4 French actress Lea Seydoux.
The end goal of the daily blind-tasting is the yellow label, the signature champagne of Veuve Clicquot which is the culmination of blending and fusing 500 different points.
Born to a family of winemakers in the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Charlemagne had always known her destiny lay in winemaking.
Four years ago, she joined Veuve Clicquot as a winemaker after completing degrees in agronomy engineering and oenology.
“I used to be more of a Chardonnay girl but with Clicquot, I’m more pinot noir,” she said.
On her first visit to Malaysia, Charlemagne was the guest of honour at a special luncheon held at Beta KL — Picture courtesy of Veuve Clicquot
As Veuve Clicquot globally celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, she’ll be the first to tell you about the all the things that sets Veuve Clicquot apart — its amazing collection of old reserve wines, its wine expertise, its grape quality and its heritage of Madame Clicquot, who took over the family business after husband Francois Clicquot died six years after their marriage in 1798.
The tough widow successfully led them through war and near financial ruin and in 1818, was the first to produce rosé champagne by adding red wine instead of traditional elderberry juice.
Today, 90 per cent of the rosé champagne is made this way.
Just how exceptional is Veuve Clicquot? Well, a bottle of nearly 200-year-old Veuve Clicquot found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea broke the record for the most expensive and oldest champagne ever sold.
The bottle dated at approximately 1841 and one of the 40 found in the shipwreck fetched a staggering €30,000 (RM150k) at an auction in 2011.
“The 40 bottles found under the Baltic Sea didn’t belong to us, it belonged to the island of the shipwreck,” said Charlemagne.
But it was an interesting discovery which led Veuve Clicquot to experiment by storing bottles under the sea to recreate the same conditions the shipwrecked bottles were found in.
Every two years, the bottles were taken out of the sea and compared to the bottles that were stored in their cellars.
“We realised that under the sea the aging of the wine is slower because the pressure is higher so the wine keeps for longer,” she said of the ongoing experiment.
Traditionally, winemaking has been a male-dominated profession but that’s changing with the gradual but steadily growing involvement of women.
“In Clicquot, we definitely need women on the winemaking team because of the history of Madame Clicquot, it works, it’s better,” she said.
