Comet Vintages - 1811 Vintage

1811 Vintage

The 1811 comet vintage has had the most lasting notoriety. The comet that year was the Flaugergues comet, named after Honoré Flaugergues who first spotted the comet in March. The comet was visible for most of the growing season, which saw optimal conditions for many of the world's major growing regions, but particularly for France. After a string of bad vintages at the start of the 19th century, the 1811 vintage was a reversal of fortune in regions like Bordeaux, Cognac, Champagne and Sauternes. For Cognac, the vintage was considered one of the greatest in history, with many producers today including images of stars on their labels as an homage to the 1811 vintage. Notable wines from this include the 1811 Château d'Yquem, which received a perfect 100-point wine rating by wine critic Robert Parker at a 1996 tasting over one hundred and eighty years after it was bottled. In Germany, the 1811 vintage was so successful that producers along the Rhine would label their wines as "comet hock".

The 1811 bottling of vintage Champagne from the Champagne house of Veuve Clicquot has been theorized to have been the first truly "modern" Champagne. The wine was one of the first to be described as "limpid" or sediment-free. This was due to the new technique of remuage or riddling developed by Veuve Cliquot that tackled the historical problem of how to remove the ill tasting and unpleasant looking sediments from the sparkling wine without losing the carbon-dioxide gas that makes it bubble. The development of riddling was a hallmark moment in the evolution of the modern Champagne industry. In the early 19th century, Veuve Clicquot tried to keep their techniques a secret, but the clarity and limpidity of their Champagne captured worldwide attention and eventually their secret escaped. In the summer of 1812, following Napoleon's invasion of Russia, despite a decree from Tsar Alexander I of Russia banning the importation of French wine in bottles, Louis Bohne, lead sales agent for Veuve Clicquot, was able to smuggle a large quantity of the 1811 Cuvée de la Comète into Königsberg. As word of the wine's quality spread, Bohne found eager customers among the Russian elite with even the Tsar himself seeking out the wine.