The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It (P.S.)

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Champagne sold in France during their lifetime often had two hundred grams of residual sugar. The Russians liked it sweeter still. François hoped that Russia would become an important market for the future of Clicquot-Muiron wines; there, three hundred grams of sugar was common. To get an idea of what this must have tasted like, consider that even our most sugary dessert wines are positively tart in comparison. An ice wine or a sauternes only rarely has two hundred grams of sugar. The 2001 vintage sauternes made at the legendary Château d’Yquem in France, one of the most concentrated harvests in years, has only 150 grams of residual sugar. One of the sweetest wines around—the late-harvest dessert wine made in California’s Napa Valley by Grgich Hills known as Violetta—has just 250 grams in an average year. Imagine it with bubbles, and that’s more or less what a glass of champagne in the eighteenth century tasted like.