Read Online The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J. Mazzeo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tilar J. Mazzeo
Tags: Historical, Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks; Food & Wine, Business, Women, Wine & Spirits, Professionals & Academics, spirits, Beverages & Wine, Culinary, Specific Groups, Champagne, Drinks & Beverages
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the rich knew its sensuous appeal.
Champagne’s iconic status would only emerge much later, because the boom times ended as suddenly as they had begun: By the 1740s, fashion suddenly changed. The growers and distributors, counting on regular extravagances in Paris and looking to make easy money, had planted too many vines, many of them cheap, and the wine market in the Champagne crashed. As bad wines flooded the market, the reputation of the entire region suffered. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the local sparkling wine that François had dreams of once again selling to the world was little more than an extravagant curiosity, known only at the royal courts of Europe. It might well have stayed that way. Had the local wine industry not been reinvented by a handful of talented entrepreneurs—and had champagne not been transformed into the world’s most powerful symbol of celebration and the good life—this sparkling wine would have soon faded into the background of world history. And Barbe-Nicole’s amazing story would have disappeared with it.
Anonymity in Their Blood
D espite the grim state of the wine industry in the Champagne during the last decades of the eighteenth century, François and Barbe-Nicole were looking forward to the future with optimism. Not many people in France shared that optimism.
The country had been at war since the early days of the Revolution—for nearly a decade when Barbe-Nicole and François were married. Now, in the first year of Barbe-Nicole and François’s life together, the Austrians drove the French across the Rhine at Stockach in a bloody battle that left less fortunate men than François maimed, and the British forced a French retreat in Holland. British admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed almost the entire French navy in the Battle of the Nile, leaving nearly forty thousand young soldiers not very different from François stranded in a war zone with no way of getting home.
Despite the unrest that spread across the European continent, in this small corner of northeastern France the future seemed bright. Barbe-Nicole and François were young and wealthy, and passion for expanding the family’s wine business quickly united them. Dreaming of a life in the wine trade and watching the harvest that first year, caught up in the spirit of gaiety that it always occasions for those whose lives are spent watching the slow and uncertain progress of a vintage, they had every reason to be thankful.
To another young man with his roots in the fields of the Champagne, the future also seemed bright in the last year of the century. In early November 1799, when the peasants were at work clearing the debris from the vineyards, word came of monumental changes in Paris. The young general Napoléon Bonaparte—so crushingly defeated in the Battle of the Nile that summer—had overthrown the government in a stunning coup, declaring himself the first consul of France. These were the first heady and frightening days of what would soon become the Napoleonic empire.
Under the new consulate, the dazzling lifestyle that Barbe-Nicole had known as a girl became fashionable again. For an affluent young woman from one of the most ambitious families in Reims, now the mistress of her own home, it should have been an exciting time. But despite her enviable good fortune—and despite even François’s obvious pleasure in sharing his passion for the wine business with her—Barbe-Nicole’s world in 1799 was quickly closing in. As the wife of an important business owner and the daughter of a man with great political ambitions, the future imagined for her was a luxurious but narrow one. She was on her way to achieving the respectable anonymity for which women of her class were praised. It was a future spent largely in nurseries and drawing rooms.
Already that spring, she had given birth to a baby girl, born at the family home on March 20, 1799, and named, like her mother and her sister, Clémentine. This
Champagne’s iconic status would only emerge much later, because the boom times ended as suddenly as they had begun: By the 1740s, fashion suddenly changed. The growers and distributors, counting on regular extravagances in Paris and looking to make easy money, had planted too many vines, many of them cheap, and the wine market in the Champagne crashed. As bad wines flooded the market, the reputation of the entire region suffered. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the local sparkling wine that François had dreams of once again selling to the world was little more than an extravagant curiosity, known only at the royal courts of Europe. It might well have stayed that way. Had the local wine industry not been reinvented by a handful of talented entrepreneurs—and had champagne not been transformed into the world’s most powerful symbol of celebration and the good life—this sparkling wine would have soon faded into the background of world history. And Barbe-Nicole’s amazing story would have disappeared with it.
Anonymity in Their Blood
D espite the grim state of the wine industry in the Champagne during the last decades of the eighteenth century, François and Barbe-Nicole were looking forward to the future with optimism. Not many people in France shared that optimism.
The country had been at war since the early days of the Revolution—for nearly a decade when Barbe-Nicole and François were married. Now, in the first year of Barbe-Nicole and François’s life together, the Austrians drove the French across the Rhine at Stockach in a bloody battle that left less fortunate men than François maimed, and the British forced a French retreat in Holland. British admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed almost the entire French navy in the Battle of the Nile, leaving nearly forty thousand young soldiers not very different from François stranded in a war zone with no way of getting home.
Despite the unrest that spread across the European continent, in this small corner of northeastern France the future seemed bright. Barbe-Nicole and François were young and wealthy, and passion for expanding the family’s wine business quickly united them. Dreaming of a life in the wine trade and watching the harvest that first year, caught up in the spirit of gaiety that it always occasions for those whose lives are spent watching the slow and uncertain progress of a vintage, they had every reason to be thankful.
To another young man with his roots in the fields of the Champagne, the future also seemed bright in the last year of the century. In early November 1799, when the peasants were at work clearing the debris from the vineyards, word came of monumental changes in Paris. The young general Napoléon Bonaparte—so crushingly defeated in the Battle of the Nile that summer—had overthrown the government in a stunning coup, declaring himself the first consul of France. These were the first heady and frightening days of what would soon become the Napoleonic empire.
Under the new consulate, the dazzling lifestyle that Barbe-Nicole had known as a girl became fashionable again. For an affluent young woman from one of the most ambitious families in Reims, now the mistress of her own home, it should have been an exciting time. But despite her enviable good fortune—and despite even François’s obvious pleasure in sharing his passion for the wine business with her—Barbe-Nicole’s world in 1799 was quickly closing in. As the wife of an important business owner and the daughter of a man with great political ambitions, the future imagined for her was a luxurious but narrow one. She was on her way to achieving the respectable anonymity for which women of her class were praised. It was a future spent largely in nurseries and drawing rooms.
Already that spring, she had given birth to a baby girl, born at the family home on March 20, 1799, and named, like her mother and her sister, Clémentine. This
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