The de Venoge family is of Swiss origin; the ancestors de Venoge actually lived in a region of Switzerland that is crossed by the de Venoge river. In 1788, Marc-Isaac de Venoge married his cousin Marie-Françoise de Venoge, and they bore a son Henri-Marc who founded the Champagne house de Venoge in 1837 at Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. Henri-Marc was a risk taker and a brilliant entrepreneur from the beginning. He expanded commerce to the surrounding countries in a matter of months. By 1838, the family business was already exporting Champagne to Brussels, Mannheim and London, then later Copenhagen and Munich.
Joseph de Venoge, Henri-Marc’s son and successor, was the true builder and ambassador of the brand. He and his son introduced De Venoge to the United States in the late 1830s and it gained renown in Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans. Joseph created the first “cuvées spéciales” which were to become independent brands that increased the depth of the maison’s already rich portfolio. Cordon Bleu was created in 1851, the Vin des Princes in 1858 and others in the years that followed. Joseph’s successors reaped the fruit of his labor in the U.S. market when de Venoge won the Grand prize at the Philadelphia Universal Exposition in 1876. By 1900, the annual production of de Venoge was surpassing a million bottles.
Today, the Maison is no longer family run, but de Venoge continues to craft wines with the very same passion and dedication to quality that drove three centuries of innovators to create and build one of the finest brands in Champagne.