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

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Champagne’s iconic status would only emerge much later, because the boom times ended as suddenly as they had begun: By the 1740s, fashion suddenly changed. The growers and distributors, counting on regular extravagances in Paris and looking to make easy money, had planted too many vines, many of them cheap, and the wine market in the Champagne crashed. As bad wines flooded the market, the reputation of the entire region suffered. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the local sparkling wine that François had dreams of once again selling to the world was little more than an extravagant curiosity, known only at the royal courts of Europe. It might well have stayed that way. Had the local wine industry not been reinvented by a handful of talented entrepreneurs—and had champagne not been transformed into the world’s most powerful symbol of celebration and the good life—this sparkling wine would have soon faded into the background of world history.