What would you do if you were widowed at 27 and had to run a struggling wine business all by yourself while raising your small child? Combine this difficult scenario with 2 wars, global trade restrictions, plagues, economic turmoil, and cut throat competition – and you have the life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot. Barbe-Nicole is the famous widow who started Veuve Clicquot Champagne House in the late 1700s and she is attributed for being the mother of Champagne as a brand and world renowned product. Join Sarah as she reviews the biography of this incredible woman’s life by Tilar Mazzeo.
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What would you do if you had just started a small family wine business but suddenly you found yourself widowed at the age of 27 well Barb Nicole Pon sarden clicko took this opportunity to build her family’s champagne business in less than a decade to one of the largest
Champagne Brands the world knows hi friends my name is Sarah and I’m a certified somaler and host of the wine CEO podcast show and we are celebrating women’s History Month here on the wine CEO podcast podcast and this week I’m really excited to be giving you a book
Review this is actually the first time I’ve done this here on the wine CEO podcast but I had the opportunity to read a really amazing book The Widow CCO by tar Mao it’s all about the story of Barb Nicole Pon sardan Clio and the amazing VV Clio champagne brand so today
I’m going to be giving you quick insight into this incredible book telling you a little bit more about it so that hopefully it piques your interest to read it as well All right so today’s episode is kind of an interesting one usually here on the wine CEO podcast I’m interviewing a wine maker or I’m featuring a wine region talking about a particular grape variety but today I’m doing a book review I’m reviewing the Widow Clio a book by tar
Mao that is a biography on Barb Nicole p Don Clio or the VV CCO the Widow CCO VV means Widow in French and V CCO is a very famous champagne brand many of you may be familiar with the yellow label V CCO house champagne this is on many
Shelves in common wine markets and supermarkets around the world and when some folks think of champagne it is synonymous with this yellow label champagne now that was not always the case and this book tells the incredible story of Barb Nicole and how she became known as the Widow clico and how her
Champagne then became known around the world it’s a really fun book and it was also a very easy read I actually listened to it on Audible it was just a few hours long but even if you were to read the book it’s only 16 chapters they’re very short chapters and honestly
It was really fun I think it was a great book that combines personal story uh Regional history as well as a little bit of wine making knowledge so it was really fun how the author kind of uh interweaves Barb Nicole’s personal story with the history that’s happening
Throughout France at the time as well as some of the social and economic pressures that barb faced that speaks to some of the things that women were challenged with at the time um she then also finds fun ways to weave in facts about champagne champagne production and
Some really unique things that I think make it uh an educational but fun book as well so what I’m going to do today is give you a really quick overview of why I loved the book and some of my favorite themes from the story I’m not going to
Go chapter by chapter and give you a complete overview of the book because I want you to go read it but if you love this and you want to learn more about each chapter or you want to get more of my thoughts on specifics in the book
Drop a comment below and let me know maybe we can do another episode in the future or we could do a live on Instagram to be able to discuss the book if you’ve read it before but I don’t want to go chapter by chapter and tell
You everything because I want you to go read the book it’s really good you definitely need to check it out now while we all think about champagne and we know it today as this beverage that you pull out when you’re celebrating something and maybe when you think of champagne it’s synonymous with this
Beautiful yellow label that definitely was not the case in Barb Nicole’s era so Barb Nicole was born in the late 1700s and champagne was not called champagne until the 1800s so while the region of Ron um was definitely making champagne everyone is familiar with dum peran the
Monk who helped with the progression of champagne because while wine makers had been making champagne in the region for many years uh they didn’t quite understand why their sparkling wine looked the way it did acted the way it did and Don peran is allegedly the one who did some research around that and
Was able to identify and help the wine makers understand how to reproduce champagne and make it a little closer to the sparkling beverage that we enjoy today now the author kind of um argues if that’s actually the case or not what we can agree upon is that wine has been
Made in the Champagne region for many many centuries and sparkling wine was um becoming more and more prevalent around Barb Nicole’s era now what was sold out of the region was more of the still wines so still white and red wines were really the wines that were produced and
Sold outside of the area but these sparkling wines would have been enjoyed in the region and some of it probably would have made its way to Paris and a few other areas as well but the thing about the champagne at the time is it was cloudy um it was very very sweet
Like very sugary dessert sweet and so it is not at all the product that we know today and so Barb Nicole and her family would have simply referred to this as sparkling wine it was not yet referred to as champagne and Barb Nicole was actually born into a wealthy textile
Family and so her father was a textile Merchant he had factories and actually the Ron area was known for a lot of textile factories and so it was a very big industry way more than Wine um wine was still very small product it’s not
What Ron was known for at all and so the region really focused on factories clothing tapestries um and a lot of other uh textiles it was definitely not a Champagne region yet so Barb Nicole’s father actually had a arranged marriage for her with another wealthy textile
Family in the area and so Barb Nicole Pon sardan married franois Clio and so franois was the son of the CCO family Texas tle business and so they were married for a advantageous marriage between the two fathers and their textile businesses now the Clio family so franois family had a very small wine
Production as a family it was a very small business and they would sell some of their wine locally they would give a couple bottles with their textile Merchants as they would go out to sell textiles U but it was definitely not a burgeoning business by any means it was
A a kind of a small side hustle we’ll call it now in Barb Nicole and Francois got married it was at the height of the French Revolution and so it was illegal to have a Catholic Ceremony now the P sardans Barb Nicole’s family they were very Catholic and so Barb Nicole and
Francois were actually married in these cellers underneath the CCO Family Estate so while this was kind of um a inconvenience for Barb Nicole and Francois it’s kind of interesting how this would become intertwined into the future of Barb Nicole and truly her identity so again at the time francois’s
Father was really just dabbling in Champagne it was kind of his local side hustle just in the region but this would become something really important to Francois specifically so barbar Nicole’s husband had a great interest in Champagne he felt that this was an amazing product and something that the
Family should be investing in so much more he was not as interested in the textile business and he was really bored by everything that his father wanted him to do in textiles so instead he encouraged his wife to help him and decided that the two of them were going
To help invest in the CCO family champagne business now francois’s father was not crazy about this idea at first but he decided that he would let franois dabble in the champagne business because he was going to continue running the textile business he wasn’t quite ready to retire yet so while he wanted franois
To be a part of the business he knew that he could go ahead and kind of play with his Champagne Dreams for a few years and then he would join in the textile business later so Francois began using the distribution methods that the family already had for their textile
Business to begin Distributing their Champagnes outside of the region of Rance outside of the region of champagne and even outside of France now he wasn’t wildly successful to start but he was making an extra good cushion of money and so his father was proud it was a
Little extra for the family wasn’t a a crazy excellent business but it was just a little something extra uh that helped the business continue to flourish sadly what Francois and Barb Nicole started to realize was that champagne was not very popular folks weren’t really familiar with this product they they were more
Familiar with still wines with spirits and so they didn’t really understand what this was it wasn’t known for celebration at all again that’s something we know it as today but at the time it was kind of this Oddity and people were wondering like why do I want
My wine to Bubble why do I want it to be effervescent and it was rather expensive because at the time uh there were inconsistent glass bottles because there weren’t the industrial advances quite yet to create consistent bottles that would have made consistent champagne bottles and so you had these kind of
Different shaped odd sized bottles and um often the bottles would break because they were so delicate with the bubbles inside of them and so champagne producers had to charge a premium because it was a little more difficult to store their champagne to transport their champagne and so because of that
It was expensive it still wasn’t very popular and so while franois was able to sell some of this wine because it was definitely fascinating to some it was not exactly something that picked up quickly and so business was just kind of okay for a few years but they realized
Quickly that the product didn’t quite have this excellent name and brand that they had hoped now that all changed when Napoleon bonapart became emperor of France although although Napoleon bonapart was originally from Italy he grew up in Ron and so he had a very special place in his heart for champagne
And as soon as he became emperor of France he began throwing these lavish parties in his Palace and he would serve champagne so champagne very quickly became synonymous with celebrations with the aristocratic Elite and it became something that was really known for celebrating and for the rich and wealthy
To be able to only enjoy the peasants and others didn’t have access to it and so it started to become something that was really The Talk of the Town everyone wanted to try this champagne and even as far as Russia and the United Kingdom and many other countries Germany Austria
Lots of people started asking for champagne now right around the time that this started happening though Francois fell very ill and Barb Nicole had already noticed that Francois had a tendency to have large mood swings he would get very depressed at times he had a very sensitive disposition and so
There are kind of two different rumors that go around here some people say that it’s possible that Francois committed suicide because he was depressed because he saw that the wine business had been uh going down for so long and he didn’t feel like he was making the success with
His champagne that he had hoped to show his father and um unfortunately the uh excitement around Napoleon bonapart hadn’t quite reached uh their their pockets yet so they weren’t making enough money to really make it a profitable business and they kind of had one season after the next of difficult
Harvests so anyway so one um group of people kind of had this rumor going that maybe Francois committed suicide but what the family said was that he died of typhoid fever um but either way Francois passed away and left Barb Nicole as a widow at the age of 27 now it’s
Interesting to note that under Napoleonic law at the time women could not own a business on their own so a single woman was not able to be a business owner however if her husband owned the business and as a family they were running the business and then her husband passed away she was
Allowed to continue as a business owner as a widow so kind of interesting and what the author talks about a lot and I love that this is a theme throughout the book she talks about how if Barb Nicole had been born a few decades earlier she
Probably would not have been a part of the business at all because while family businesses were a thing for um more uh poor families it would not have been something that the bgeo class would have participated in and that was really where the pon sardin family was and so
She wouldn’t have really been a part of a family business in the past she would have just been kind of part of the aristocratic um Elite and if she had been born any later then she would have been born in an era where the bgea women didn’t want to participate in business
And it really was looked down upon for a woman to continue a business even if she was a widow and so she was really born in this unique time period where she was given the ability to run this business and make it her own and it was um not
Considered uh socially unacceptable um and it was odd it was definitely not normal for a woman to run a business but as a widow she was definitely legally able to do so and it was not considered again inappropriate or unacceptable so basically Barb Nicole goes to her
Father-in-law and says I would like to run the business moving forward and her father-in-law who at this point is ready to retire and he’s devastated because of the loss of his son it was his only child he says Fine Barb Nicole whatever you want you can go ahead and do because
I’m too tired I’m getting out of the business I need to retire here and you do what you want and so she had full control of the clicko family business now remember this is the textile business as well as this wine business that has been struggling but Barb Nicole
Is very passionate about so Barb Nicole decides to make a pretty big risky decision and she goes and tells all of their textile investors all of their clients that they are exiting the textile industry she then goes and tells them that she is going to 100% be a
Champagne house that the CCO family is going to be focused on the production and distribution of champagne and that is going to be the future of the business now this is a very risky decision remember Barb Nicole is 27 years old she grew up watching her father in the textile business so she’s
Very Savvy she paid attention to the businessman that he was but she doesn’t know much about wine she has spent a few years now in her time married to Francois where they’ve watched wine makers make wine they have uh worked in their own Vineyards to understand the process of growing grapes and pressing
Grapes but she’s never left France she is not familiar with wine distribution and so it’s a pretty risky decision because she is putting all of her eggs in one basket but she’s a Visionary and she sees that champagne is going to grow in popularity and she wants to be a part
Of that she’s also much more passionate about champagne than textiles so she decides we are going to throw all of our company resources into our champagne business now Barb Nicole has one daughter from her marriage to Francois and her name is Clementine and Barb Nicole loves Clementine and it feels
Like a lot of what she does is for the success of her daughter Clementine so she’s working so hard to make sure that her daughter has a bright future now one of the themes of the book kind of starts to play out here so again Barb Nicole is
Recently widowed and she decides that she’s going to put everything into this champagne business and she wants to make it successful so that she can provide for her daughter she comes from an already wealthy family her husband’s family was wealthy and so she has the ability to not work she could literally
Just take a step back have someone else run the business she could live a very leisurely life raising her daughter at home she could go to bgea parties in the evenings and the weekends she could find a new husband and she could live a life of leisure but she chooses not to and
That’s definitely not a normal thing in this era in this time in Europe in France specifically and so it really speaks to uh Barb Nicole’s personal drive and amb not that there’s anything wrong with getting married and wanting to have more kids and that was definitely what
Society would have expected of her at the time but she decides that she wants to do something different she doesn’t want a man who’s going to tell her how to live her life how to spend her money how to run her business and she realizes that as a 27-year-old widow she actually
Has more freedom than she would have in a marriage and she’s excited by this this is thrilling and she kind of alludes to this in some letters that she writes to one of her cousins and um some letters written to her sister and so it’s really inspiring to see how this
Woman says you know I don’t care about what would be the easy path for me I want to work hard I want to own my business this is not something that would be commonly expected of me but this is what I want to do with my life
And so it’s really exciting to see how um she’s just different right she does something totally different than anyone else would have expected of her at the time so here she is at 27 and she is working like 14-hour Days 7 days a week because she wants to learn the business
She wants to make it successful and she feels like the harder she works the faster she’s going to get ahead of her competition mainly moette and um she just she puts in all this incredible work and so I think that’s inspiring to see that she wasn’t just someone who was
Handed you know this already built champagne house and she just kind of you know put her name and brand on it and became famous she worked her behind off for years to make this successful and it wasn’t super easy up front although Napoleon was making champagne famous because of his lavish parties Napoleon
Quickly falls out of Grace and Barb Nicole’s life spans multiple revolutions and royalty back to Emperors back to royalty and and um all of the political turmoil then results in economic turmoil that makes it very difficult for Barb Nicole in her early years of this business now one of the things that
Happens that is really pivotal for Barb Nicole she’s had years and years of struggling with this business getting it off the ground really trying to beat her competitors in the market not being able to um figure out how to make her brand known champagne is becoming more known
But people will kind of buy whatever champagne is cheapest and so she’s really been struggling and what ends up happening is just at the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Russian soldiers who had just beat Napoleon and his army were in RS and um bar Nicole knew that they
Were going to celebrate with champagne so these Russian soldiers were all breaking into champagne houses stealing champagne and drinking it and Barb Nicole gave a whole bunch of her champagne to the Russian soldiers and she did this and moette did something very similar because they realized that
The Russian soldiers were going to go home and become advertisers for this product so Barb Nicole realized that by the time the Russians got back home and they were talking about this champagne she needed to be ready with cases and cases of champagne that would make it to
Russia before her competitors so that she could sell to the Russian market now at this point in time exports had been cut off especially to Russia and other areas in Eastern Europe where Napoleon had been at war with these areas and so exporting outside of France was illegal
And you needed particular licenses in order to be able to sell abroad um champagne and wine and certain French goods were under these restrictions so Barb Nicole was faced with a unique challenge here so she knew that these Russians were going back to Russia and they were going to have this taste for
Champagne they were going to tell all their friends and family about this amazing drink they got to celebrate the end of the war with in France and she knew that her competitors were going to be loading their um carts to immediately take cases of champagne to go to Russia
Now at the time it was a very long journey to get wine to Russia it could take weeks uh various you know uh carts and horses and barges and boats and it was just a very very long journey so Barb Nicole started thinking ahead and she really knew that she had two options
She could wait until these trade restrictions were lifted and she knew that she could get a license and Export her products over to Russia or she could try to beat her competition there so she did something really gutsy and she decided to pack up cases and cases of
Her champagne and find a captain of a ship that was willing to take her Contraband and in secret uh basically hide it in cases that made it look like it was not champagne and transported as far as they could into a port just outside of Russia where it would sit and
Wait for the trade restrictions to be lifted so that they could immediately enter Russia and sell this product so I’m not going to go into all the details because there was a little bit of back and forth in the story some uh wines that get spoiled and then they have to
Try it again but long story short because of this gutsy decision Barb Nicole gets her champagne into Russia before all of her competitors and she ends up becoming very well known in Russia and a lot of Eastern Europe and because of this throughout France so much so that people started referring to
Champagne as the VV champagne which then became shortened as VV and so individuals would literally go into a restaurant or a bar and they would order a glass of VV so they ordering a glass of the Widow this became so important because remember that up to this point
Champagne was known as sparkling wine and it really started to get the name champagne around this time period but no one was really the leader in the market You could argue that moette was a little bit farther ahead than most of the other houses because they were able to make a
Larger production they’d been established a little bit longer but there was still a lot of opportunity for other houses to step up and become known and for Barb Nicole to become synonymous with the word champagne at this time that basically her name was the same as ordering this glass of bubbling wine is
Pretty incredible and it stayed this way to the extent that if you look up the word Widow in the maramman Webster dictionary today one of the definitions for Widow is champagne which is pretty incredible so this is really where things change for Barb Nicole and again
I’m going to kind of like skip through because I think I’m excited talking about the book so I feel like I’m giving you more details than just the themes at this point but basically Barb Nicole becomes unbelievably wealthy because of this decision her wines become very well
Known all around the world she’s able to start selling more exporting more making more and she becomes an absolute sensation and is just making a ton of money um and becomes literally one of the main names of champagne so really incredible um you hear about her daughter’s story her daughter getting
Married and um Barb is able to basically marry her daughter into nobility because of the wealth that barb has um accumulated and so her business goes through some various twists and turns um but really incredible work but Barb does not stop there you could think at this
Point that she would say well I’ve made my money I’m just going to kind of sit back and let things go but She’s continually pushing to make sure that her business is successful and that she’s finding the best things possible to make sure that her brand continues to
Be popular so she actually becomes an innovator and so she designs a product that would later become known as a pitray and basically what Barb Nicole does is she’s working with her wine maker and she’s realizing that there’s still all of these particles that are in the champagne bottle and so the
Champagne is not clear often it’s still a little cloudy it still has a little bit of the Dead yeast cells in it and she realizes that this is not a great thing for her marketing this is not great for her brand and so she actually has her wine maker take her large wooden
Dining table and drink holes in it the size of the necks of the wine bottles so that she can actually tip the wine bottles upside down to make it easier for the sediment the dead yeast cells to fall into the neck of the bottle and all
Of the wine making team is kind of making fun of her and they’re like kind of crapping on her her plan here they’re like no this is not going to work this is a horrible idea Barb Nicole like you don’t know go back to the business you don’t know what you’re talking about
When it comes to wine making like leave it to us and she’s convinced no this is going to be a better way to help remove these dead yeast cells so we actually get a cleaner and clearer wine product and we don’t spoil as much wine when we
Lift the cap and try to get this out what wine makers were doing before that is they had this process where they would like shake the bottle to try and get the sediment and the dead yeast cells um out faster and they ended up losing a lot of wine in the process so
Barb Nicole designs this she’s able to show them how it actually does help these dead yeast cells pop out much faster you don’t lose as much wine you have a clearer product in the end and they’re just absolutely astonished and so what they do is they actually then
Take her dining table as like the um the the model right um and they make these A-frame uh pitray and it’s basically this A-frame wooden design where wine bottles can be inserted and it helps um hold the bottle at the right angle so that slowly over a period of time um
Called riddling is the process the Riddler can turn the bottles and can actually help the uh dead yeast cells fall slowly into the neck of the bottle so that it can be removed faster now we do this much faster nowadays in a uh machine that was created by the Spanish
Called a gyop pette and this allows us to actually have the um dead yeast cells go into the neck of the bottle in like two weeks um sometimes even faster so definitely um a lot better than Barb Nicole’s day and age but for her time this was absolutely Monumental and
Believe it or not she had such loyal team members in her Winery that they were able to keep this pupitre technology an absolute secret for about a decade which means that all of her competitors were still making champagne that was just a little cloudy wasn’t quite as crisp as Barb Nicole and they
Were getting more spoilage every time they would try to remove the dead yeast cells and so they weren’t making the same profit that she was making so for 10 years she had this Competitive Edge over her peers in the industry there in Champagne because of this amazing
Innovation that she had now it’s kind of funny because although Barb Nicole was this amazing businesswoman who um was really strong and she fought for her business and you know she didn’t want to have a husband or a man telling her what to do it’s interesting that it was never
A part of Barb Nicole’s plan to have her daughter take over the business so her daughter becomes kind of the woman that barb Nicole didn’t want to be herself her daughter marries into no ability and she becomes this kind of aristocratic uh woman who throws parties and is able to
Enjoy the leisurely life she has her own child but she’s never a part of the wine business and Barb Nicole continues to run the business on her own she doesn’t let her son-in-law or her daughter be a part of the business she has a new business partner at this point in time
That’s doing a lot of the sales and a lot of the wine production but she continues just running everything on her own Barb Nicole has other business ventures and other things that she gets into and she um gets to see her grandchildren born and then even later great-grandchildren now her life was not
Without suffering she did end up watching many of her family members die um she in fact even buried her own daughter and some of her grandchildren um so she had many challenges um her work continued to be a steadfast though I mean she continued working these
14-hour days until the age of 64 so she was a bit of a workaholic but she had built this brand she had built this business and so even though she loved her family and would consider herself a family woman she definitely made her business her priority and she loved that
Brand she loved the company she had built and she had become a bit of a celebrity folks all wanted to come to Ron and get to see a Peak at the Widow clicko this famous Widow that had become synonymous with champagne around the world so she definitely was a bit of a
Celebrity and because now her daughter had been in nobility there were many Royals and individuals that would come to the area um the Napoleon III then became a part um intertwined with the family so they were definitely a part of the aristocracy and they were able to
Enjoy a lot of parties and um the the wealthy lifestyle so she kind of infiltrated nobility a little bit even though she was not herself nobility um and so she really uh became well known throughout France because of this brand that she had created now again I said I
Wasn’t going to go into all the details of the book I feel like I’ve gone into a lot of them but Barb Nicole retires um in 60 at the age of 4 uh she then gets into decorating Estates so she buys beautiful castles and builds wonderful homes and decorates them and just spends
Time with her family until she passes away at the age of 89 so it’s interesting because in this time period what we see is that family run businesses become a thing of the past and really the time period gives birth to um more industrial uh Le businesses so Barb’s business becomes very
Corporate during her lifetime um she ends up when she retires passing the business off to her business partner not her family so her family obviously continues to make plenty of money from the business but the running of the business the um day-to-day details she ends up hiring what would be today
Considered like a CEO a CFO manager of operations and so she has this board that runs the business for her so um she is the owner but really it’s operated by a team and start to see this uh in many businesses at the time she was not the
First to do this it was definitely something that became more prevalent to a lot of companies in the time again it was just not common for them to be passed from family member to family member anymore it was more common that these businesses were becoming more corporate um and there were really a
Board of directors and leaders that were running the business um instead of just passing it down to the next family member so kind of interesting that barb Nicole really established the business and then obviously ran it for like over 50 years um but then she passes it off
And oddly enough she passes it off to a group of men um and that would not have been uncommon at the time because again if you remember what I said earlier she was born at this really unique time where a few years later it would have been socially um unacceptable for her to
Have really run a business or managed a business and so women were not leading businesses it was all men so it wasn’t that uncommon that she passed her business over to men but the sad thing is that it would be 150 years before another woman would be at the helm of
This wine business so this kind of brings me to uh the point so this kind of brings me to what I think is really at the heart of this book and that is the inspirational story of these women who championed champagne and inspired other women throughout the wine making
Industry and even other businesses uh to trailblaze and to own their own business to run in an industry indry that was male dominated so while Barb Nicole started her own champagne house and became this um well-known Figure Head as the Widow of VV CCO there was another
Widow a few years later that became very well known for a different aspect of the champagne industry and that is Louise Pomer and many of you may be familiar with the pomery champagne house today but in Barb Nicole’s time Pomer was a very very small family-owned champagne
House and Luis pomy and her husband had just started running the champagne house when her husband passed away so Louise pomery faced with the same scenario that barb nle had been faced with um Louise was in her 40s when her husband passed away she decided that she was going to
Have a opportunity and she was not going to pass it up and so she became the operator of the shampagne uh pomery house uh and she actually was calling it V Pomer at the beginning because you can understand that VV CCO already had this well-known recognition and so she was
Kind of trying to play off of that Fame that barb Nicole already had and so um she started the VV pomy label and she actually specifically went to reach the British market and she was the first champagne house to realize that the British really wanted a dry style
Champagne and so she created a new style of champagne that had really not been made in the region at all and it was brute brute champagne that she sold to the UK it became very very popular she made a lot of money and became very famous in the Champagne region so Barb
Nicole and the V Clio uh label then realized that they needed to also make a brute version that they could sell in the UK so that they could buy into that market and so they created a new champagne with a yellow label that was their V clico brute now this is actually
The same champagne that we all typically enjoy today when we’re enjoying the yellow label of CCO this is the brute champagne so we enjoy a much drier style of champagne today than would have been enjoyed by many in Barb Nicole’s time especially in the original early days of
Champagne production but I think it’s really interesting to see how Barb Nicole’s early trailblazing was able to set the stage and Inspire other women and there’s many that I could name throughout the Champagne region throughout France and really around the world that have been inspired by Barb
Nicole’s Legacy to really be able to build their own business and as I mentioned it would be over a hundred years before another woman would be at the Helm of the VV Clio Winery but today there are many female wine makers and Winery owners that attribute some of
Their success to the Widow CCO and how she really created the opportunity for women to have a place in the champagne world and so a lot of champagne today um gives their their praise to the queen of rants who was Madame click who really helped to make champagne what
It is today but also opened up doors of opportunity for women to be able to join the industry and flourish it’s interesting to think that champagne would not be what it is today if it had not been for the Widow Clio it’s interesting how sometimes the most normal people have the most incredible
Impact on society and I think that was an encouragement for me you don’t have to be a you know famous queen or princess or someone who has h a particular title you can be an average businesswoman who works hard who has a dream and does not stop until they make
It happen and that average normal life can really turn into something that has incredible impact on the lives of so many so I hope that is inspiring to you today as well um I think to summarize some of the main themes that I saw throughout the book really interesting
History you get to learn a lot about um what happens during the French Revolution um the bonapart eras um the Industrial Revolution at the end of the book so it’s really interesting to see how the era in this time period really impacts daily life for French citizens
As well as business owners the author talks a lot about champagne she references the champagne production she talks a little bit about um the great varieties in the region I’ll say that 98% of it was fairly accurate I think as a certified Somalia I could be highly
Critical and say that there were some things that I probably would have said a little differently or that weren’t 100% accurate when I think about uh champagne and the region and uh the most accurate perspective but as a whole if you are reading it to appreciate champagne and
Learn more about the product as well as understanding This Woman’s life and history then I think it is an amazing representation it’s interesting because another theme that the author kind of refers to a lot is how Barb Nicole was this incredible businesswoman who rose
Up in a time where it was not common for women to be able to own a business or really run a business and she kind of breaks all of these barriers um to create this Monopoly of her champagne house but by doing so contributes to this industrialization of the industry
That makes it more difficult for women wine makers and business owners to be able to rise up in the future and so she kind of talks about this unique ju toos between the work that barb Nicole did but how it didn’t necessarily Aid women in the future so it’s kind of it’s a
Tough concept because while she did Inspire individual women to be able to um follow their dreams and be a part of the industry and really trailblaze in their own way by establishing this kind of larger corporate industry it also made it very difficult for women in the future because it became a very
Male-dominated corporate world so kind of an interesting comparison but that was a unique um historical thread that I think again you have to understand the full context that the book gives around the economic challenges the Social Challenges the political challenges of the the climate at this time um so
Definitely really really interesting but I think I found the book inspiring because I saw this woman who really challenged the status quo who worked really hard for something that she was passionate about she didn’t give up when things were hard and not just hard one
Time but hard over like a 20 year period where she easily could have given up thrown the towel in and said this is just not working let me go back to you know my father’s wealth the texstyle business something else she didn’t give up she pushed really hard and um she had
A difficult life in many ways but she had a dream she pushed for it and she made it happen now some of the story I think is glorified a bit because we don’t know everything about Barb Nicole we don’t have as much historical evidence to be able to draw all of the
Conclusions that I think the author did but it’s a beautiful story and I think it’s a a really cool reminder and she was definitely an amazing woman a really incredible entrepreneur and someone who to this day is highly respected in the Champagne region and throughout a lot of
The world and the legacy of Barb Nicole continues today in that the champagne house VB clicko has honored her with the name of their Teta cuve which is considered the highest champagne in any champagne house so the name of the V click touve is lran D or the great woman
The great lady and it’s in reference to the belief that barb Nicole was truly this queen of rants she is L Grandam she’s the grand woman that started the champagne industry and really trailblaze to make it what we all know it as today and so you can enjoy latet de of V Clio
And enjoy a glass of LR today so that’s my quick overview on on the Widow Clio definitely not quick I went into a lot of detail but I really enjoyed this book I think it was so fascinating and highly recommend you read it it’s a very easy
Read a very fun book if you love champagne if you love wine if you love history definitely one that you cannot miss thanks for listening today friends I hope you enjoyed today’s episode if you learned something new don’t forget to like and share this episode with a
Friend if you want to check out this book check out Today’s Show notes I have the link so that you can go ahead and order it on Amazon or check it out and listen on Audible like I did if you have any questions about this episode or wine
In general don’t hesitate to send me an email Sarah thee win ceo.com or you can always send me a message on Instagram at thee wine CEO and until next week friends I hope you drink something new and delicious maybe have a glass of of champagne and I will catch you all in
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1 Comment
Truly such a wonderful book! 🥂