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Cooking, Food & Wine |
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The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
written by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Studio : Collins Business
by Collins Business
Release Date : 2008-10-28
Publisher : Collins Business
Released : 2008-11-01
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780061288562
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 27 reviews)
List Price : $25.95
Our Price : $15.73
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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 Napoléon and Joséphine 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. |
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Americancivilwar.com Review |
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Americancivilwar 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 élan 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 François 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 |
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Another great rise to power book |
I read The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty recently, and I just finished reading Widow Clicquot. I never knew the wine business was so interesting! This book captures the dynamic story of a strong, independent woman who makes a name for herself in the wine industry. There is so much emotion in "The Widow Clicquot" and the author's descriptive writing style allows the reader to really dive into the book--reading should be an experience, and with this book, it is.
It's a great light read; I would recommend it. |
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delicious story of the queen of champagne |
Imagine it is sometime in the mid-nineteenth century and we are sitting in a gambling den in London among a group of aristocratic young rakes. After a while, the cry goes out: "A bottle of the Widow!" This seemingly obscure evocation is enough to bring the thirsty patron one of the most-recognized luxury items of his day: a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne.
Who was the Widow Clicquot Ponsardin, and how did she give her name to one of the greatest champagne empires the world has ever known? That is the subject of a fascinating new biography by Tilar J. Mazzeo. She describes what can be known of the life of a remarkable Nineteenth-Century French woman who during the course of her eighty-nine years experienced tragedy, Revolution, war and ultimate triumph. In an age when most women of her class were expected to live anonymous lives raising children, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot founded a commercial empire and ran it for nearly seventy years. She lived to see her chidren and grandchildren ascend to the aristocracy based on her tremendous success as a businesswoman.
Her family was already well-off by the time she was born, enough so that she nearly lost her life in the French Revolution. The family business was textiles, not champagne. The brief years of her marriage were spent in a futile attempt to make a go at the champagne business with her husband Francois. Only after his death was the business a success. Geopolitical events conspired against them: this was the age of Napoleon and war, blockades and prejudice against French products all made it remarkably difficult to sell champagne on the European market. Ironically, Russia, where Napoleon would meet his great defeat, eventually became her best customer.
After Francois died, Barbe-Nicole never remarried. This gave her a unique opportunity to take over the champagne business and to run it herself. Although women rarely ran business enterprises in Nineteenth-Century France, it was not unheard of for a widow to operate a champagne business after her husband's death. What distinguished Barbe-Nicole was her enormous ambition and competitive streak, her keen business sense, and her willingness to run huge risks to build her business. Over the course of seventy years, she overcame extreme adversity to build a champagne empire worth billions in today's dollars.
Tilar Mazzeo charts the rocky story of Barbe-Nicole's life for us in an entertaining and even suspenseful manner. Along the way, we learn a lot about the history of champagne, the way it is manufactured, what makes for its different blends and qualities, and how it was bottled, stored and shipped during the Nineteenth Century. We discovery, for example, that Barbe-Nicole invented "remuage," a technique of clearing debris from champagne bottles, that eventually allowed for more speedy mass production. We learn about the spectacular vintage of 1811 and the delicate conditions under which champagne had to be stored. The descriptions of champagne were so vivid that at times, reading this book made me very thirsty for a good glass of bubbly.
"The Widow Cliquot" is a fun history of one woman's life and the business of champagne. It reads well and quickly and I found it quite entertaining. |
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Should Have, Could Have, Would Have.....Written a Better Book |
I wanted this book to be fabulous more than you can imagine. I was so excited about reading this. I love Veuve Clicquot Champagne, the simple orange label to la Grande Dame. I'd heard while in France that she was something of an unusual woman, not exactly beautiful, but she did amazing things.
So there's this book. At first look you would swear this was somebody's thesis. It's around 270 pages. A big read right? Well wrong, there's about 70 pages of footnotes, acknowledgements, and index. The story is really only less than 200 pages long. Then there's the repitition. I got very tired of more or less the same thing said over and over again.
The bad part of the book: virtually every single sentance starts off with either "imagine this", or "might have", "must have", "could have", "had to".... I think Ms. Mazzeo found every possible word in the English language to say - I don't really know what happened, but this certainly could have happened. It got very very very tiresome after the first 50 pages.
The worst part of this book: Ms. Mazzeo simply tells us very basic simple things about wine making and French history. There's nothing new here, nothing revolutionary, nothing compelling.
The crime of this book: it wasn't made into a story where I really cared about anyone in the book. People died, and it was just a fact repeated 5 or 6 times with no emotional connection. I wanted to be drawn in. Instead I was barraged with fact after fact.
I gave this book 2 stars because there is some level of completeness and Ms. Mazzeo must have spent a long time writing this book. It's two stars just because she tried.
I certainly hope she was awarded her pHD. |
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A nice bouquet, though not as fizzy as I had hoped |
As an educated fanatic of all things of 18th century French origin, it was with great anticipation that I waited for my copy of The Widow Cliquot to arrive in my mailbox. I was enormously excited to read about a woman who lived through a revolution and a restoration only to establish a thriving commercial enterprise (and all during a time when women were not accepted in the business world).
So you can imagine my slight disappoinment when I discovered that the book was more about the history of champagne making than the private life of Barbe-Nicole. I thought the writing was solid and engaging, but often strayed from the subject matter: The Widow.
I found myself wanting to know more about the woman - her likes, dislikes, the challenges she faced as a female owner of a male driven business, what she felt about her husband.
I would have liked to have read some of her letters or excerpts from her journals. I also think there should have been artwork - portraits of the people mentioned, engravings of the art of champagne making, and paintings of The Widows estates.
All in all a good read, but a trifle flat.
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Prepping you for the holidays! |
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This book was an interesting way to lead into the holidays, the season of champagne! It moved along quickly, and held my interest the entire time. This is an excellent book to prepare you for those uncomfortable small talk moments at holiday parties. There is almost always champagne at those parties, and there are some really interesting points in this book that would serve as excellent conversation starters. |
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