The Widow Clicquot (24 page)

Merrett’s lecture on winemaking
: Christopher Merrett,
Some Observations Concerning the Ordering of Wines
(London: William Whitwood, 1692).

John Evelyn’s
Pomona: John Evelyn,
Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions. By J. E. Esq. As it was deliver’d in the Royal Society the XVth of October, MDCLXII…To which is annexed Pomona; or, an appendix concerning fruit-trees in relation to cider
(London: Joseph Martyn & James Allestry, 1664).

a full decade before the wine was first produced in France
: Liger-Belair, p. 10; Brennan, p. 249; Delpal, p. 127.

owned lucrative property in the Champagne
: Kladstrup, p. 50; see also Christine Pevitt,
Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France
(New York: Grove Press, 2002).

50 percent of it was sold directly to the palace at Versailles
: Brennan, p. 255.

CHAPTER FOUR: ANONYMITY IN THEIR BLOOD

The country had been at war since the early days
: The history of the Napoleonic Wars (often chronicled as a continuation of the wars that followed from the French Revolution) can be understood in a general way by talking of a series of coalitions. But the truth of the matter is that throughout the period, dozens of countries or principalities were involved, and they were often engaged in maddeningly complex multilateral conflicts.
The war of the First Coalition, a French victory principally over Austria and the Italian states, formally ended in 1797 and extended the boundaries of France as far as the Rhine River. This was economically important for the Champagne region in particular. Even after the treaty in 1797, France remained at war with Great Britain.
The Second Coalition focuses on the years from 1798 until about 1805 and pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and several of the Italian states. There was a peace with Austria and most of the coalition members in February 1801, and a peace with Great Britain was set out in the Treaty of Amiens, brokered in March 1802. Until May 1803—for fourteen months—there was a brief peace in France.
In 1804, Napoléon crowned himself the emperor of France, and by 1805 a Third Coalition of primarily Russia, Great Britain, and Austria had developed. This period of the conflict was focused largely on Napoléon’s plans to conquer Great Britain, which were ended with the defeat at Trafalgar in the autumn. Napoléon also famously defeated the Austrians at Austerlitz at the end of the year.
The Fourth Coalition was France primarily against Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and some of the German states and ended with Napoléon’s conquest over Prussia in 1806 and over Russia in 1807. In 1806, France introduced the Continental System—a series of trade restrictions aimed at isolating Great Britain from world trade and bringing about an economic conquest. By at least 1810, many people in France were either buying or selling contraband goods in defiance of the ban, which lasted until 1812.
From 1809 until 1812, the Fifth Coalition largely pitted Great Britain and Austria against France. Importantly for Barbe-Nicole’s champagne dreams, the Russian market was theoretically (if not practically) open to French traders from 1807 to 1812. However, it was Russia’s refusal to blockade British goods that led, in part, to Napoléon’s disastrous invasion of the country in 1812.
After Napoléon’s wintertime retreat from Russia, the Sixth Coalition formed to take advantage of his weakness, with Prussia, Austria, and the German states joining Russia and Great Britain. In the summer of 1813, there was a brief period of peace from early June to mid-August, and by the spring of 1814 Napoléon had been defeated in France. The French king was restored, and Napoléon was shipped off to exile. Then, with his characteristic pluck, Napoléon famously returned to France in 1815 for the so-called Hundred Days, in a last-ditch effort to save his empire. He was finally defeated at Waterloo by the Seventh Coalition: Russia, Prussia, Austria, Great Britain, and Germany. For a detailed historical overview, see Gunther Rothenberg,
The Napoleonic Wars
(New York: Collins, 2006).

one-in-twenty chance of dying as a result of the delivery
: On infant and maternal mortality in eighteenth-century France, see Yves Blayo, “La mortalité en France de 1740 à 1829,”
Population
(November 1975): 124–142; Nancy Senior, “Aspects of Infant Feeding in Eighteenth-Century France,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies
16, no. 4 (Summer 1983): 367–388; Nina Rattner Gelbart,
The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Jenny Carter and Therese Duriez,
With Child: Birth Through the Ages
(Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1986). On British mortality rates, but nevertheless useful, is Jona Schelleken, “Economic Change and Infant Mortality in England, 1580–1837,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
32, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 1–11.

widow named Thérèse
: Thérèse Pinchart (1775–1859) married Jean-Louis Doé de Maindreville (d. 1798), a parliamentary lawyer, in 1795. Their son, Pierre (1796–1870), was born the following year, and she was widowed in 1798.

Clémentine and Thérèse quickly established themselves
: Crestin-Billet, p. 15.

It is probably not a coincidence that the public still thought of them both as whores
: Susan P. Conner, “Public Virtue and Public Women: Prostitution in Revolutionary Paris, 1793–1794,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies
28, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 221–240, writes that “in the name of ‘virtue’ they had executed Marie-Antoinette, the quintessential whore of the eighteenth century,” p. 222. The infidelities of Joséphine Bonaparte, meanwhile, were legend; on the political use made of her indiscretions by her enemies, see, for example, Evangeline Bruce,
Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage
(New York: Scribner, 1995).

“Anonymity runs in their blood”
: Virginia Woolf,
A Room of One’s Own
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), p. 50.

Lady Bessborough
: Quoted in Woolf, p. 55; see also Janet Gleeson,
Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana
(New York: Crown, 2007).

“A prejudice against women acting in the marketplace”
: Bonnie G. Smith,
Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoisies of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 47;
Code Napoléon; or, The French Civil Code. Literally Translated from the Original and Official Edition, Published at Paris, in 1804
, trans. George Spence (London: William Benning, 1827).

Today, wine tasting is a multimillion-dollar tourist industry
: According to the Sonoma County Tourism Board, wine tourism generates over $1 billion in revenue in Sonoma County, California, alone; statistics available at www.sonomacounty.com.

expect to find their wines labeled
: Tomes, p. 173.

“opportunities for women to participate in rebuilding the industry”
: Ann B. Matasar,
Women of Wine: The Rise of Women in the Global Wine Industry
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 75.

Dame Geoffrey
…
Widow Germon
: Brennan, pp. 261–262.

Widow Robert and the Widow Blanc
: Brennan, p. 261; Claire Desbois-Thibault,
L’extraordinaire aventure du Champagne Moët et Chandon, une affaire de famille
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003), p. 31; Etienne, p. 59.

Historian Béatrice Craig
: Béatrice Craig, “Where Have All the Businesswomen Gone?: Images and Reality in the Life of Nineteenth-Century Middle-Class Women in Northern France,” in
Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres
, eds. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig, and Alastair Owens (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006), p. 54.

salesman from Mannheim, Germany
: Alain de Vogüé,
Une maison
de vins de champagne au temps du blocus continental, 1806–1812,
thesis for the Diplôme d’Études Supérieures d’Histoire, June 1948, p. 3.

grand plan for selling wines in Great Britain
: Ibid.

luxuries like French wine and silk had been contraband
: Gavin Daly, “Napoleon and the ‘City of Smugglers,’ 1810–1814,”
Historical Journal
50, no. 2 (June 2007): 333–352; for a more complete account of Anglo-French trade relations during the Napoleonic period, see François Crouzet,
L’économie britannique et le blocus continental
(Paris: Economica, 1987).

mildly effervescent champagne known as
crémant: Etienne, p. 96.

more than half the weekly salary of many of the people
: Brennan, p. 261.

If his portraits are any indication, Jean-Rémy
: Promotional display materials, Champagne Moët et Chandon, Reims; portraits reproduced in Victor Fiévet,
Jean-Rémy Moët et ses successeurs
(Paris: E. Dentu, 1864).

since the heyday of the 1730s
: Brennan, p. 198.

a deal for the sale of two or three thousand bottles of nearly flat champagne
: Etienne, p. 96.

“The day very hot”
: Dorothy Wordsworth,
The Grasmere Journals
, ed. Pamela Woof (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 125.

“In the memory of man”
: Quoted in Etienne, p. 36; letter of August 20, 1802.

Allart de Maisonneuve woke up to find
: Brennan, p. 252.

“foundation of an entirely different commercial system”
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, p. 56.

CHAPTER FIVE: CRAFTING THE CUVÉE

Jean-Antoine Chaptal’s treatise
: Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal, Comte de Chanteloup,
L’art de faire le vin
(Paris: Madame Huzard, 1819).

“a decisive turning point in the history of wine technology
”: Jerry B. Gough, “Winecraft and Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century France: Chaptal and the Invention of Chaptalization,”
Technology and Culture
39, no. 1 (January 1998): 74–104, 102.

Napoléon ordered departmental prefects throughout France
: Gough, p. 102.

worth three times what it sold for by the barrel
: Brennan, p. 250.

springtime moon had the power to raise a tide of bubbles
: Louis Saint-Pierre,
The Art of Planting and Cultivating the Vine; and Also of Making, Fining, and Preserving Wines, &c
. (London: n.p., 1722), p. 230.

ancient festival of St. Vincent
: Émile Moreau,
Le culte de Saint Vincent en Champagne
(Épernay: Éditions le Vigneron de la Champagne, 1936).

guests consumed a thousand bottles in a night
: Desbois-Thibault, p. 35.

his own boyhood in the region
: Napoléon spent five years at the military academy in Briennes-le-Château (Aube); “Napoleon I,”
Encyclopædia Britannica Online
, available at http://www.search.eb.com.prxy5.ursus.maine.edu/eb/article-9108752; see also Alexandre Assier,
Napoléon Ier à l’École Royale Militaire de Brienne d’après des documents authentiques et inédits, 1779–1784
(Paris: n.p., 1874). Jean-Rémy Moët was educated at the same academy, and there is a charming tradition that tells how the two young men first became friends as students. Unfortunately, the dates of their attendance do not correspond. However, it seems likely that their shared experiences at Brienne provided a foundation for the warm personal relationship that developed in later years. On Moët’s education, see Desbois-Thibault, p. 26, n. 1.

books such as Jean Godinot’s
: Jean Godinot,
Manière de cultiver et de faire le vin en Champagne
(1722), ed. François Bonal (Langres: Dominique Guéniot, 1990); Nicolas Bidet,
Traité sur la culture des vignes, sur la façon du vin, et sur la manière de le gouverner: Ouvrage orné de figures, & en particulier de celle d’un pressoir d’une nouvelle invention
(Paris: Chez Savoye, 1752).

According to local custom, it lasted for twelve days
: The so-called
bans de vendange
had their origins in medieval feudalism; today, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, a trade organization comprising growers and champagne producers, regulates all aspects of the champagne harvest, in collaboration with the French government; details available at www.champagne.fr.

favorite haunt at harvest-time was in the village of Bouzy
: Etienne, p. 32.

première taille,
or the first cutting
: Anonymous [S. J.],
The Vineyard
, pp. 49–52.