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

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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 30 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

An Interesting Read November 27, 2008
The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J Mazzeo is clearly a labor of love. The author goes into painstaking detail regarding a fairly obscure part of French history to tell us the story of a remarkable woman and by extension the story of how Champagne became the bubbly we love today. Barbe-Nicole Cliquot (nee Ponsardin)lived during the French revolution and would no doubt be even more obscure than she is had she not been pushed into business by the untimely death of her husband.
Mazzeo does a great job of bringing Barbe-Nicole to life even while acknowledging the places where the historical records are thin. She is able to educate the reader on a number of subjects, including wine making and French history, without losing sight of the main character.

1 out of 5 stars

surely not November 26, 2008
1 out of 2 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.

Certanily 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 women's history. The point is this: women's lives don't follow 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.

1 out of 5 stars

Definitely not drinking stars here - or - The bottle is decidely half-empty November 26, 2008
3 out of 4 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

I knew it was my favorite champagne for a reason November 24, 2008
Now, I know it is more than sheer enjoyment of a bottle of bubbly, but also because it was founded and run by a woman.
I am very sad that so little of Barbe Nicole's life survived in letters and journals, from what is recounted in the book, I am convinced she was a formidable woman who showed true grit and bravery in a time when women were seen and not heard.
She took big risks and in the end reaped grand rewards for herself and for her family. I am deeply in awe.
I love the delicious notes on how champagne is made, because it helped me understand what exactly she was struggling to accomplish and against what odds.
I also found out where the nutty flavor in some champagnes come from.
It was a fascinating read. I recommend it if you are at all interested in women's history or wine.

4 out of 5 stars

Champagne and the woman who ruled it! November 24, 2008
The Widow Cliquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It - was wonderful and exposed me to a field that I knew nothing about. As a historic biography this is a page turner, easy to read and pulled me in.

What really stood out to me and carried through this book was the author's - Tilar J. Mazzeo - obvious passion for the study of wine and she did a great job of bringing to life what could easily have been a "dry" or "brut" subject! LOL!

Good Grape Wine Company