Veuve

Through Industrial and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic wars (which gave rise to Napoleonic codes), Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, not only survived (in spirit and pure chance), she obstinately to revolutionize the industry and perservered Champagne she came to know and love. Mazzeo Tilar La Veuve Clicquot tells his story. And an impressive history, it is.

One could say that the calculation and risk were in the blood Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin. She grew up the child of a wealthy family in the Champagne region of France. She was only 11 years old when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. During the years of the Jacobins, his father made the maneuver to become a Dominican himself, hide his natural affinity for the nobility (and thus, its own aspirations to become a noble way). And during those years when Catholicism was illegal, the married daughter Barbe Ponsardin, Nicole - discreetly - in a ceremony at the church with the family will attend.

Family Barbe-Nicole was married to change his fate: she came to share a passion for wine with her husband, Francois Clicquot. They conducted an intensive wine education , forged in the fields of Champagne. Sadly, Francis died tragically young. Barbe-Nicole was just 27 years, and now a single mother.

Like her father before her, the young widow - with an amazing vision - took advantage of his status as a widow (the Code Napoleon dictated that the work of a woman was that of wife, mother, guardian). Perhaps inspired by the winemakers widow before her Veuve Clicquot (Veuve is "widow" in French) went to his father-in-law and asked permission to run the winery. He has one condition: that she work under the supervision of an experienced winemaker. Thus began the business - risk, loss, luck, and all - that will eventually make his name a global brand and its wines an emblematic figure of luxury and festivity.

Tilar Mazzeo from the start, admits that there was little material to work with, when she began the effort to write the amazing story Clicquot. This is because the story of the widow is primarily one who "lives in the half-life shadow of the oral folk legend." Anyway, Mazzeo is a biographer and writer impressive. It does not assume the operation has recorded other successful entrepreneurs and industrialists of the day, and imagination are rooted in what must have been, rather than assumptions of what probably was.

For those who love good wine, champagne, in particular, I see no better book to savor. With, of course, a bottle of bubbles and beautiful. The widow herself was full of verve and cunning, and its history - as well as champagne - is interesting to taste and enjoy.