The Widow Clicquot - Now in Paperback

Through the French and Industrial Revolutions, Napoleonic Wars (which gave rise to the Napoleonic Codes), Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot not only survived (by wits as well as sheer luck); she stubbornly perservered to revolutionize herself as well as the industry of Champagne she came to know and love.  Tilar Mazzeo's The Widow Clicquot tells her story.  And an impressive story it is.

One could say that calculation and risk were in Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin's blood.   She grew up the child of a wealthy family in the Champagne region of France.  She was only 11 years old when the French Revolution broke out in 1789.   During the Jacobin years, her father made the calculated move to become a Jacobin himself, masking his natural affinity for the nobility (and, in doing so, his own aspirations to become a nobleman as well).  And during these years when Catholicism was illegal, the Ponsardins married their daughter Barbe-Nicole - quietly - in a church ceremony with only family attending.

The family Barbe-Nicole was  married into changed her fate:  she came to share a passion for wine with husband Francois Clicquot.  Theirs was an intense wine education, forged in the fields of Champagne.  Unfortunately, Francois died tragically young.  Barbe-Nicole was only 27 years old, and, now, a single mother.

Like her father before her, the young widow - with amazing foresight - decided to take advantage of her widow status (the Napoleonic Codes dictated that a woman's work was that of wife, mother, caregiver).  Possibly inspired by widowed winemakers before her, Veuve Clicquot (Veuve is "widow" in French) approached her father-in-law and asked permission to run the winery.  He allowed her to under one stipulation: that she work under the tutelage of an experienced winemaker.  Thus began the undertakings - risk, loss, luck, and all - that would eventually make her name a world brand and her wines an iconic figure of luxury and celebration.

Tilar Mazzeo from the outset admits that there were few materials to work with when she undertook the endeavor of writing Clicquot's amazing history.  This is because the Widow's story is mostly one that "lives in the shadowy half-life of oral folk legend".  Nonetheless, Mazzeo is an impressive biographer and writer.  She doesn't take for granted the recorded workings of other successful entrepreneurs and industrialists of the day, and her imaginings are more steeped in what must have-been, rather than postulations of what probably-was.

For anyone who loves good wines, Champagne in particular, I can think of no better book to tuck into. With, of course, a lovely bottle of bubbles as well. The Widow herself was full of verve and cunning; and her story – as well as that of Champagne – is an interesting one to tuck into and savor.