Veuve Clicquot Wraps Its History in Paper and Clay

The first thing you notice about the new Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame 2018 Rosé is not the bottle, but the box. It feels less like packaging and more like a piece of sculpture. The textured surface, subtle color, and solid form have a story of their own before you even get to the wine.

This is the work of Italian artist Paola Paronetto. Her collaboration with the Champagne house is a deliberate choice, signaling that the experience here begins well before the cork is pulled. Paronetto’s signature is a technique she calls “paper clay,” a unique blend that gives her objects a fragile, yet permanent quality. For La Grande Dame, she created a series of six gift boxes, each cast in a distinct color from her personal palette.

The Pinot Noir Question

The wine itself continues a story that began centuries ago. La Grande Dame is Veuve Clicquot’s prestige cuvée, a tribute to Madame Clicquot herself. Her great contribution to Champagne was an early and unwavering belief in the power of Pinot Noir. At a time when others hesitated, she saw its potential for structure, depth, and complexity.

The 2018 Rosé is a direct expression of that vision. The blend is almost entirely Pinot Noir, making up 90% of the cuvée, sourced from historic Grand Crus like Aÿ, Verzenay, and Bouzy. The remaining 10% is Chardonnay from Avize and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

To create the rosé, the house adds 14% red wine, made exclusively from Pinot Noir grown in the prized Clos Colin parcel in Bouzy. It is a precise and technical decision that defines the final character of the wine.

Art as a Second Skin

The connection to Paronetto feels earned. Her work is about texture and form, just as winemaking is. The colors she chose for the gift boxes are meant to harmonize with the new rosé. They move from light to dark, reflecting the tasting notes which begin with red fruits like strawberry and evolve into spicier notes of pepper and paprika.

The boxes are also designed with a practical purpose. Made from FSC-certified paper with a 30% recycled content, they are fully recyclable and free of plastic. The gesture frames the luxury of the wine within a modern sensibility about waste and materials.

For a brand like Veuve Clicquot, which is part of the LVMH group, such collaborations are more than just marketing. They are a way of participating in a wider cultural conversation. The bottle becomes a canvas, and the act of opening it becomes part of a larger artistic statement.

It suggests that heritage is not something to be merely preserved. It is something to be actively reinterpreted, generation after generation. Here, the reinterpretation comes through color, texture, and form. A new skin for a very old soul.

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