The Story of Veuve Clicquot Champagne

THE STORY OF
VEUVE CLICQUOT
CHAMPAGNE

AND THE WOMAN
WHO BROUGHT IT TO THE WORLD

Oscar Wilde once said, “Only the unimaginative can fail to find a reason for drinking champagne.” (Kladstrup 2005, 5). While most champagne drinkers do not understand the physical science behind the bubbles – bursting at the surface…making a crackling sound…radiating a fragrant cloud of tiny droplets over the tip of the nose… causing a heightened sensual experience for the taster (Liger-Belair 2004, 103) – they know champagne is synonymous with celebration and the good life. Champagne is also a wine associated with women. This is the story of one woman whose pioneering passion for winemaking changed her own destiny, and that of champagne – Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who lived through the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars to become the first great female entrepreneur of her time and build the famous champagne house that still today bears her name: Veuve (“Widow”) Clicquot.
Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin was born in Reims, France in 1777. Her father, Count Nicolas Ponsardin, was a prominent, well-connected textile merchant and an ambitious politician who, as Mayor of Reims, hob-knobbed with the likes of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. His dreams of nobility were shattered in 1789 when a bread riot-turned-grassroots political movement hailed the start of the French Revolution. Nicolas was wise enough to know how dangerous it would be to side with his aristocrat friends, so in a decidedly practical move, he joined the revolution as an activist. Embracing the “cause of the common man,” he saved his family fortune, and even prospered.
At 21, Barbe-Nicole wed Francois Clicquot in an arranged marriage – an economic decision made by her father to connect two wealthy merchant families. In addition to their textile business, Clicquot et Fils, Francois’ family dabbled in wine. They also owned a great deal of property in the Reims countryside which was regarded as prime grape-growing land. (It is notable that by the 18th century, the concept of terroir was already recognized; even then, it was widely known that soil and microclimate play as much of a role in shaping the character of wine as the winemaking style itself.) Although Francois’ father regarded wine as a sideline, Francois dreamed of reinventing the family business to focus exclusively on wine, and he dedicated himself to developing a small wine trade. Fortuitously, Barbe-Nicole shared the same dream. They received a large farm and cash as a wedding gift and, united by their passion for wine, they proceeded to develop expertise in growing, making and marketing the best local wines. “They had the resources to dream, and it was a dream of wine from the beginning” (Mazzeo 2008, 21).
It wasn’t long before Barbe-Nicole and Francois discovered ‘the bubbly.’ In the 1790’s, the French called this intensely sweet dessert wine vin mousseux, or sparkling wine – it was not until the 1860’s that the term “champagne” was used. In reality, it was nothing like the champagne we enjoy today. In addition to the fact it was served as a cold, icy slush, it was also ten times sweeter, often having as much as 200 grams of residual sugar, and it produced a foamy head not unlike that of beer, and large, gassy bubbles. The French aristocracy disliked the bubbles and considered it a sign of poor winemaking (Liger-Belair 2004, 11). In fact, bubbles in wine were an indication that something had gone wrong. This ‘problem’ first appeared in the Middle Ages, with a climate pattern change that brought much colder weather. During the fermentation process, winter temperatures dropped so low that the yeast did not have enough time to consume all the sugar. Then, when spring brought warmer temperatures, a second fermentation took place which resulted in bubbles being trapped in the wine. Although this methode champenoise, or champagne method, is how sparkling wine is made today, winemakers in the 17th century regarded this second fermentation as accidental. Dom Perignon, the famous winemaking monk, is largely credited with having discovered champagne, excitedly proclaiming he was drinking “stars” – as it turns out, this was just clever marketing because in reality, he had been given the task of trying to find a way to get rid of the bubbles that were thought to be ruining wines. What he did do, however, was pave the way for today’s sparkling wines by advocating gentle pressing – “because the color from the skins was largely eliminated from the juice, the resulting wines were no longer murky but instead were distinguished by their clarity.” (Kladstrup 2005, 27).
Fortunately, these “accidental” sparkling wines developed a sort of cult following. They became a status symbol for the trendsetters of the time, and a market for them developed throughout Europe – by 1808, sparkling wine was “all the rage in Russia” (Susie Lacey, “Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin”, December 29th, 2008, http://www.LadieswhoLaunch.com).
Even though Barbe-Nicole was living a privileged, comfortable life as the wife of a wealthy businessman, societal laws of the time dictated a “narrow world” for women; as historian Bonnie G. Smith put it, “A prejudice against women acting in the marketplace appeared in the Napoleonic Code (which) pointed women toward an exclusively reproductive life.” (Mazzeo 2008, 39). Happily for Barbe-Nicole, however, though her husband Francois made all of their financial and business decisions, he did not exclude her from the vineyards. As he evolved from grower to vigneron, she was by his side, and by the time he died of typhoid in 1805, leaving her a widow at the age of 27, she had already learned a lot about winemaking, and began to imagine a different future for herself. As a widow, she now had the ability to manage her own affairs, a unique situation in French culture at the time.
Just four months after her husband died, Barbe-Nicole was able to persuade her father-in-law to give her a chance to take over the family business. Without Francois, his only son, Phillippe Clicquot’s first inclination was to liquidate the company; instead, he partnered her with Alexandre Fourneaux, a wealthy textile merchant and winemaker. Barbe-Nicole and Alexandre each invested 80,000 francs (about $4 million in today’s equivalent) in capital to start their new company, Veuve Clicquot Fourneaux. In their first year in business they had some “beginner’s luck” – in the midst of a war with Great Britain and political tensions that were not especially conducive to the international wine trade, they were able to negotiate delivery of 50,000 bottles of champagne through a military blockade that was paralyzing commercial shipping routes. Ultimately, ongoing blockades, skyrocketing storage costs & port fees, and an inability to get insurance to cover transportation of wine during wartime, made the situation untenable. By the time their four-year contract expired, Alexandre gave up his interest and walked away.
It is ironic to note that the many wars following the French Revolution were both a hindrance and a help to Barbe-Nicole as she struggled to stay in business, and their importance can’t be overestimated. “Wherever French troops were to be found… (champagne) was never far behind. As soon as a battle was won, up they would move their supplies for the victory celebration…” (Forbes 1967, 143). Barbe-Nicole herself often opened up her cellars to “thirsty Russian troops, turning French defeat into a marketing coup” (Guy 2003, 15) and in the century that followed Russia became Clicquot champagne’s top market. Even Napoleon, before each of his campaigns, was known to stop at the cellars of his friend Jean-Remy Moet to pick up a supply of champagne. “In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it,” he said (Kladstrup 2005, 65).)
Barbe-Nicole carried on. Her father-in-law, still confident in her abilities, supplied another infusion of cash, and to keep the business going, she sold local red wine by the barrel. She took a temporary break from the luxury wine market, but continued to make champagne. Realizing its potential, she was determined to perfect the process to eliminate the big bubbles and unsightly foam and sediment. Her obsession with making crystal-clear wine with small, pretty bubbles, led her to the revolutionary technique of remuage (riddling), without a doubt her most important achievement, and the discovery that transformed the way champagne was forever made. Using her own kitchen table, she “riddled” it with slanted holes into which she inverted champagne bottles. She periodically removed the bottles and gave them a sharp twist which loosened the sediment and allowed it to settle on the corks. This accelerated the process of clearing the sediment. In just six weeks, one quick flick of the cork (degorgement) removed all of the unwanted debris. Then the bottles could be topped off with more wine and resealed with a new cork. (It was actually Veuve Clicquot’s chef de caves (chief cellarer) Antoine Muller who discovered that cutting the bottle holes at a 45-degree angle was the key to this technique (Stevenson 1986, 36).) Up until then, removing the sediment had been a labor-intensive, expensive, tedious and time-consuming task (often taking many months) done with a variety of methods. One such method was transvasage, which involved pouring the wine out of one bottle into another; the problem with this was that in addition to destroying some of the fizz, it also wasted a lot of good wine! Barbe-Nicole knew her discovery automatically gave her a huge advantage over her competitors – her biggest and most formidable rival was Jean-Remy Moet, and she “looked forward to devastating” him. (Mazzeo 2008, 127). Amazingly, she was able to keep this “secret” from her competitors for almost a decade before others, Jean-Remy included, began using it. But by that time, Veuve Clicquot champagne had already become one of the world’s most famous and sought-after wines.
Barbe-Nicole was also one of the first winemakers to use labels on bottles, realizing the use of her name was her best marketing tool. Her famous yellow label, the “color of the egg yolks of the famous corn-fed hens of Bresse” (Mazzeo 2008, 177) has been recognizable to champagne lovers all over the world for generations.
Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin turned a small family business into a vast enterprise that evolved through changing times of war, industrialization and mass production. Although she is most famous for her business success, it would be incorrect to think of her only as an entrepreneur. She was a true visionary who paved the way for future generations of businesswomen. She was a mother and a great-grandmother. She built and decorated homes, gave parties, and was involved in charitable causes. Toward the end of her life at the age of 89, Barbe-Nicole wrote to a great-grandchild, “The world is in perpetual motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligence direct your life. Act with audacity. Perhaps you too will be famous.”