While women were not allowed to own businesses in nineteenth-century France, three widows who were exempt from the rule built some of Champagne’s most lauded empires.
Winding roads converge near a gated chateau on the outskirts of the north-eastern French city of Reims. Cars line a roundabout surrounded by fields. The air is quiet and calm. The real action takes place nearly 20 metres underground.
More than 200 kilometres of cellars cut through this underworld, with millions of Champagne bottles lining chalky rock walls, unlabeled and marked with the words “I was here” by tourists in the dust covering them. Some are upside-down, chained, and glowing in the dim light of the cellars against the backdrop of tunnels that appear to lead nowhere. Others are stored in small caves with wrought iron gates. This is the epicentre of the global Champagne market.
And, historically, widows ruled in the caves. Several women’s ingenuity was responsible for some of Champagne’s most significant innovations. The Napoleonic Code of the nineteenth century prohibited women from owning businesses in France without the permission of a husband or father. Widows, on the other hand, were exempt from the rule, allowing Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin, Louise Pommery, and Lily Bollinger, among others, to turn vineyards into empires and ultimately transform the Champagne industry, forever changing how it’s made and marketed.
Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin married François Clicquot in 1798, and he later ran his family’s small textile and wine business in Reims, which was originally called Clicquot-Muiron et Fils. It became a financial disaster. When Clicquot died in 1805, leaving her widowed at the age of 27, she made the unusual decision to take over the company.
“It was an unusual decision for a woman of her class,” said cultural historian Tilar Mazzeo, author of The Widow Clicquot. “She had no need for a business, so it would have been extremely unusual for her to have one… She could have spent her life as a society hostess and in drawing rooms.”
She desperately needed money for her business and asked her father-in-law for the equivalent of about €835,000 today. “Amazingly,” Mazzeo explained, “her father-in-law said yes, which I always think must say something really important about who he thought she was, and what he thought she was capable of as a woman with no business background.”
The ‘veuve’ suggested a certain kind of respectability to the beverage
Barbe-Nicole used her widowed status as a marketing tool from the start, with positive results. The Champagne house was renamed Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, which translates to “widow” in French.
“The’veuve’ suggested a certain kind of respectability to the beverage… some of these beverages had gotten associated with the debauchery and wild parties of the royal courts of old,” Kolleen M Guy, author of When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity and chair of the Division of Arts and Humanities at Duke Kunshan University in Jiansu, China, explained.
Tagging a bottle with “veuve” gained clout, and other Champagne producers, such as Veuve Binet and Veuve Loche, quickly followed suit.
“Companies that did not have a widow as the head of the household would be penalised.” “Like a veuve off-brand, they could try to capitalise on this trend,” Guy explained.
Despite Barbe-four-year Nicole’s apprenticeship with a local winemaker to better learn how to grow the business, it was on the verge of collapse again in the early nineteenth century. To save it, she obtained another €835,000 from her father-in-law. However, doing so during the Napoleonic Wars in continental Europe would be difficult due to border closures that made product movement difficult.
But by 1814, Barbe-Nicole realised she was out of options. In order to avoid bankruptcy, she looked to a new market: Russia. She decided to run the blockade while Russia’s border was still closed at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
“She took this huge risk, knowing that if she could get her product into Russia before her arch-rival, Jean-Remy Mot, she would be able to capture some market share,” Mazzeo said. “Otherwise, once the border was legally open, Mot’s Champagne would arrive, and Mot would remain the dominant player in that vital Russian export market.”
Barbe-Nicole smuggled thousands of bottles across the border as a result. Because it was late in the season, the risks were high, and the heat could ruin the Champagne. And if they were caught, the bottles would be confiscated, adding to their financial woes. Fortunately, the Champagne arrived in perfect condition and quickly took over the market. “She went from being an unknown player [in Russia] to being ‘The Widow’ in 90 days,” Mazzeo said.
With increased demand came the need to ramp up production quickly. The process of removing dead yeast cells from the bottom of bottles – a necessary step in Champagne-making after ageing and fermentation – was time-consuming and detrimental to the quality. Barbe-Nicole, on the other hand, had a better plan.
“‘Take my kitchen table down to the cellar – I want you to poke some holes in it and let’s just turn these [bottles] upside-down,’ she basically told her winemakers. Don’t you think that’s a better way to get the yeast out? The yeast would settle in the neck of the bottle, and we could pop it out; wouldn’t that be faster?’ “Mazzeo told the story. “Everyone said, ‘No, no, we can’t do it that way.'” But they gave in.
It was successful. This technique, known as “riddling” (making holes in something), is still used in the Champagne-making process today.
Louise Pommery was the second widow to revolutionise the industry. Born in the year 1819, Pommery first appeared on the Champagne scene near the end of Clicquot’s life. Her mother sent her to school in England when she was young, an unusual move that would later work in her favour.
“She wasn’t just taught to sew,” said Prince Alain de Polignac, Louise Pommery’s great-great-grandson. “[Her mother] educated her, which was unusual for a bourgeoise girl at the time.”
Following her studies, she married Alexandre Pommery, who in 1856 partnered with Narcisse Greno to expand his existing Champagne house, forming Pommery et Greno. Alexandre died in 1858. The next step was obvious for Louise Pommery. She stepped in to take over eight days after his death.
“Destiny swooped in, and Madame Pommery was ready,” de Polignac explained. “With a 15-year-old son and a baby in her arms, she decided to take over [the Champagne house] instead of returning to her mother’s home.”