The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2008: With its trademark fizz and sparkling taste, champagne has long been the beverage of choice for those in a celebratory mood. From the artillery of popping corks on New Year's Eve to the clinking of newlywed glasses, a bit of the bubbly has locked arms with good cheer for centuries. Yet had it not been for the pioneering Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the libation deemed "the wine of civilization" by Winston Churchill might today be available only to the excessively wealthy or extremely lucky. Author Tilar J. Mazzeo toasts the elan of Champagne's Grand Dame with The Widow Clicquot, a fascinating story of the cunning bravery and good fortune that helped build the Veuve Clicquot brand. Widowed at age twenty-seven by the death of her husband Francois Clicquot, Barbe-Nicole assumed control of her family’s wine business amid the chaos of The Napoleonic Wars. That she became a prominent female leader in a male-dominated industry was one thing; building an empire amid savage political unrest was quite another. With passionate research and true admiration for her subject, Mazzeo pays homage to the beloved Widow from Reims and the remarkable weight her name still carries today. -Dave Callanan

Product Description

The story of the visionary young widow who built a champagne empire, showed the world how to live with style, and emerged a legend

Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomizes glamour, style, and luxury. But who was this young widow—the Veuve Clicquot—whose champagne sparkled at the courts of France, Britain, and Russia, and how did she rise to celebrity and fortune?

In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life—for the first time—the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin. A young witness to the dramatic events of the French Revolution and a new widow during the chaotic years of the Napoleonic Wars, Barbe-Nicole defied convention by assuming—after her husband's death—the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world's first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time.

Although the Widow Clicquot is still a legend in her native France, her story has never been told in all its richness—until now. Painstakingly researched and elegantly written, The Widow Clicquot provides a glimpse into the life of a woman who arranged clandestine and perilous champagne deliveries to Russia one day and entertained Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte on another. She was a daring and determined entrepreneur, a bold risk taker, and an audacious and intelligent woman who took control of her own destiny when fate left her on the brink of financial ruin. Her legacy lives on today, not simply through the famous product that still bears her name, but now through Mazzeo's finely crafted book. As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Widow Clicquot is utterly intoxicating.

Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

The Audacity of Widow Clicquot October 21, 2008
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

To her last surviving great-grandchild Madame Clicquot writes, "I am going to tell you a secret... You more than anyone resemble me, you who have such audacity. It is a precious quality that has been very useful to me in the course of my long life... to dare things before others... I am called today the Grand Lady of Champagne!"

Coming from a genteel class, it was unusual in that day to run a business, these women instead, were expected to sit leisurely around drawing rooms in idle chatter but when only twenty-seven years old, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot became a widow. The hurdles of making wine and champagne: unreliable bottle quality, turmoil of war preventing export, unusually wet or hot weather, all became Widow Clicquot's worry.

Wines that sparkled was a wine that had gone bad. And beginning in the Middle Ages in the Champagne region of France, it was happening more and more. To turn this seeming catastrophe into a success put Champagne on the map. Second fermentation, a disaster for wine, was coaxed into happening in a bottle of champagne.

The Widow Clicquot became, in the nineteenth century, a premier name in Champagne. This book puts a face on that label.

This book is not only the very interesting story of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot but it is also full of very fascinating details about making wine, making champagne, labeling varietals, labeling quality. Second fermentation, the use of sulfur and wine remaining on the lees all makes sense to me now. If you love wine you will really enjoy the history of this fascinating woman and the process of making wine.

The one detriment to this book is Tilar Mazzeo's overuse of the word "perhaps." It leaves the reader wondering just how much of the biographical information is accurate.

1 out of 5 stars

surely not November 26, 2008
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

I love champagne, especially The Widow; I love France and history and stories about brave women.

I didn't love this book.

Mazzeo couldn't decide what sort of book she was writing. It's not a scholarly study (for all that she splashes her degree across the title page) nor - as several other reviewers point out - is it quite a work of fiction. It's almost a personal memoir - too personal for my taste - but it misses the mark there, too.

Certainly Mazzeo wants to impress us. She tries very hard to make Barbe-Nicole Clicquot a metaphor for women in history, for the narrative of white space, for all those unvoiced shuttles, but she has this horridly Sarah Palin-esqe tendency to get cute about it -- the thinner the facts, the more adorable the narration.

There are two sorts of biographies: those which contain facts and analysis and those which speculate. This is the latter.

The word "surely" appears on every page.

OK, not much is known about Madame Clicquot (whom Mazzeo relentlessly and patronizingly refers to by her first name); but a great deal is known about the history of Reims and the champagne industry. Mazzeo has done admirable work on this and if she would just give it to the reader, all would be well. But she wants to be a biographer, and this leads her down a dubious path.

The most important critical/theoretical work on women's biography is the late Carolyn Heilbrun's path-making Writing a Woman's Life Writing a Woman's Life (Ballantine Reader's Circle). Mazzeo must have read it, since she brings out various of its insights with girlish glee, but she never cites it. And she misses the big point, even as she laments the lack of a narrative women's history. The point is this: women's lives don't conform to the same paradigms as men's lives. Yes, Mazzeo says this, but -- rather like the Wife of Bath - she paints a very patriarchal lion even as she objects to the paradigm of lion-painting.

As for her pretentions to scholarship, there's the opening line of her final chapter in which she proudly informs us that the Oxford English Dictionary STILL lists "champagne" as a meaning for "widow."

Well duh. The OED STILL lists every meaning ever attached to a word. That's the whole point. What the point of this book is, I'm not sure. Not tenure, I hope.

3 out of 5 stars

A Fascinating Woman in a Turbulent Time November 4, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Tilar Mazzeo's The Widow Cliquot tells the story of one of the most interesting of the early champagne tycoons: a woman who, in the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, founded a dynasty. Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the daughter of a prosperous Reims merchant, married into the Cliquot family, who sold both cloth and wine. After her husband's death, she chose to continue running the family's wine business, concentrating on the fizzy wine we now call champagne.

The Widow Clicquot faced long odds-indeed, she was a true gambler-because travel was hazardous and much of the export market was closed. Still, she clung to her vision with a remarkable tenacity and was ultimately successful-Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin is still one of the best known champagne houses in the world.

The book has a great deal of interesting information on the history and production of champagne-this gives the Widow's life some context. Mazzeo's finest moment is her taut telling of the delivery of the 1811 vintage under the specter of war in 1813. Mazzeo clearly sets the scene and lets the reader know just how high the stakes are. We really get a sense of the menace-and triumph-of the Widow's life.

Much of what happens after that drama, which falls about in the middle of the book, is unfortunately anti-climax. Mazzeo's problem is that there simply aren't any sources to guide her: since the Widow left scanty records of her personal life, we just don't know what was going on there. It's no coincidence that a well-documented episode from the Widow's business career is the best part of the book: clearly, there were solid sources to ground the story here.

There also seems to be a great deal of telling, rather than showing in the narrative. Time and again, the reader is told that Barbe-Nicole was an exceptional woman, and that she couldn't have been successful had she started her career a few years earlier or a few years later. We are also reminded frequently that Barbe-Nicole was middle class-but she came from one of the wealthiest families in Reims and ultimately ran a multi-billion dollar (in today's terms) business empire. True, she was not a titled noble, but today's audiences might not consider a woman born to her privilege and riches "middle class."

Much of the problem is apparent in the title-it's just too wordy for its own good. Why not "The Widow Cliquot: The Woman Who Ruled a Champagne Empire?" The book suffers similarly-though it's less than 200 pages, it still feels repetitious and over-long at points.

It's too bad, because Mazzeo has an great story to tell, and where she's got the benefit of solid sources, she's does a fine job. Perhaps this story would have worked better as one chapter in a book devoted to similar pioneers? It's certainly a good read, and a story that more people should know about.

1 out of 5 stars

Definitely not drinking stars here - or - The bottle is decidely half-empty November 26, 2008
9 out of 13 found this review helpful

This is yet another book project that cannot fail - the source materials and corollary knowledge easily sells the work - and yet it managed to fall tremendously flat. Between trademark-orange covers (one wonders how she managed to secure this surely-copyrighted color), we have a pseudo-biography of a historically notable woman written by a beautiful (with obligatory cover photo) young woman professor with a gorgeously exotic name. This is what one calls a "perfect marketing storm." We know we are in for a fizzy treat of "this person is important because she is a woman in business/history" and I am more than willing to drink that cup. Ah, but beware the lees! The imagined insights into her mind were both presumptuous and insignificant - a difficult feat in itself! On the one hand we were invited to celebrate a woman who did little more than spend male investments and lend her name to a product she did not invent. Her one significant contribution to the art of champagne - remuage sur pupitre (a new method of disgorging the dead yeast cells from the bottle during fermentation) - was dubiously chronicled and under-narrated. On the other hand, we were asked to forgive her bourgeois callousness as she lamented difficult sales - particularly difficult for her male agents risking life abroad - of her luxury product to people often on the edge of starvation in Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic France, Russia, and Great Britain. The other presumably unintended effect of her rise, the closing of the corporate door on other women in business, should also, according to the author's prose, be largely ignored. As should be her law-breaking to secure a monopoly in Russia. As should her exclusion of her own daughter and grand-daughter from the family business. As should her iron-fisted matriarch behavior. You get the point...
For all my complaints, I would readily forgive the flaws if the portrait of the woman involved were in any way fleshed out, or if any new material came to light, or if any of the "mysteries" and/or scandals of her life - particularly the dubious matter of the clerk Eduouard Werle who somehow had the millions necessary to become a full partner - were in any way clarified by her research. Sadly, even her knowledge of French language is deficient (a woman does not "assist" at a ball, "assister a" = "to attend a function") and her glaring errors around Louis' infamous dictum, l'Etat, c'est moi (never happened) and her assertion that "champagne had always been the drink of kings" are just plain gratuitous for a product that had only recently (less than 50 years) been invented.
Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me.

4 out of 5 stars

A unique perspective on the woman who launched a storied grande marque champagne October 24, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

This is not a wine geek account of the champagnes of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. You won't find tasting notes, vintage guides, production facts and figures, vineyard maps. It's about La Veuve, pure and simple. And that's not bad at all.

The author's viewpoint is stated elegantly in her introduction. She aims to tell "the story of a woman raised to be a wife and mother, left widowed before thirty with a small child, with no training and little experience of the world, who grasped firmly at the reins of her own destiny and, through sheer determination and talent, transformed a fledgling family wine trade into one of the great champagne houses of the world. Here, I thought, is a woman who refuses to compromise."

Indeed. We learn how, in the midst of political upheaval in France and the rest of Europe, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin went from the somewhat sheltered daughter of a successful Reims textile merchant; to the wife of something of a melancholic dilettante; to a widow suddenly left to manage a fledgling champagne business -- a woman alone in what was very much "a man's world" at the time. There are detours here and there to provide some basic information about the vineyards and the cellars, the evolution from early champagne in the sweet style to the modern fashion for brut champagne and other details. And of course, a thorough debunking of the myth of Dom Perignon.

But this is not a reference book on champagne for collectors or those looking to learn about the methode champenoise in intimate detail. It offers instead a colorful look at La Veuve herself, in her historical context. As the author discovered, the life of Barbe-Nicole is anything but well documented. But what she has pieced togther from a variety of sources -- including it seems her own imagination -- is an extremely touching and compelling portrait of a woman "who lived with audacity and intelligence" and "opened the road for new generations of women in the marketplace." Ironically, however, after the death of Barbe-Nicole, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin was not headed by a woman again for well over a century.

This is a fascinating book, one that kept my attention from start to finish. Recommended.

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