The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It (P.S.)

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

the world’s most powerful symbol of celebration and the good life—

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.

Barbe-Nicole and her sister had learned from the time they were small girls studying catechism in their convent school that the only women with public reputations were prostitutes or queens.

“Anonymity runs in their blood.”

“no woman should meddle with…any serious business, farther than giving her opinion (if she is ask’d).”

“A prejudice against women acting in the marketplace appeared in the Napoleonic Code [which] pointed women toward an exclusively reproductive life.”

Bouzy red is as expensive as champagne because it is made from grapes that would otherwise have found their way into one of the region’s famous sparkling wines.

geographic monopoly on certain words.

The wiser course was to embrace a quiet and comfortable life of polite invisibility, dedicated to domestic motherhood and pious circumspection.

champagne into an international cultural phenomenon, rich with universal symbolism and meaning.

Barbe-Nicole was not a passive idealist, and she was never more levelheaded than in moments of crisis.

you merit all the glory possible after all your misfortunes, your perseverance, and your obvious talents.”

Ironically, however, Barbe-Nicole was helping to establish a trend that would close the door on other talented and untested young women looking for a chance to enter the business world.