The Widow Clicquot Quotes

“By the dawn of the twentieth century, even before the Jazz Age made champagne the symbol of an era, the world was already buying twenty million bottles of bubbly a year.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“Even more shocking, champagne wasn’t discovered by the French. It was the British who first learned the secret of making wine sparkle and first launched the commercial trade in champagne wine with bubbles. The legend of Dom Pérignon was manufactured only in the late nineteenth”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“But one look at the business of champagne tells a very different tale. In the boardrooms and wine cellars, champagne is a man’s world. Today, there are only a handful of women in senior positions in the French wine industry, and only one of the elite and internationally renowned champagne houses known as the grandes marques is run by a woman—the house of Champagne Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, headed since 2001 by Madame Cécile Bonnefond.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“No wine in the world brings to mind so many immediate associations as champagne. The pop of a cork and the bright sparkle of bubbles mean celebration and glamour and, more often than not, the distinct possibility of romance. It is the wine of weddings and New Year’s kisses. It is beautiful and delicate, and above all, it is a wine associated with women.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“Today, Champagne Veuve Clicquot is owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, acquired 1987), which also owns Champagne Moët et Chandon.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“Of course, the French troops wasted no time in celebrating their victory, either. There is a legend, in fact, that it was during these days that the art of sabrage—opening champagne bottles with military sabers—was invented. According to the story, “Madame Clicquot…in order to have her land protected, gave Napoléon’s officers Champagne and glasses. Being on their horses, they couldn’t hold the glass while opening the bottle.” So they lopped off the necks of the bottles with their swords, and sabrage was born.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“Widowed at the age of twenty-seven, with no formal business training and no firsthand experience, Barbe-Nicole transformed a well-funded but struggling and small-time family wine brokerage into arguably the most important champagne house of the nineteenth century in just over a decade. It”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

“lobster salad and champagne were the only things a woman should ever be seen eating.”
― Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It