Here is a modest biography (less than two-hundred pages, plus notes) that can be gulped down without losing any of its fizz. Tilar J. Mazzeo’s life of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot’s ascension and lasting success as a commercial titan is a lively, smoothly written history that can be recommended for anyone wanting to know about the birth of the global Champagne market in the 19th century.
The Widow Clicquot inherited her husband’s business by the time she was 30—he died of typhoid, presumably, although he had a depressive streak, and Mazzeo doesn’t altogether rule out the rumors that he may have committed suicide. His widow, on the other hand, was an indominatable woman who lived on and on (she was 89 when she died in 1866), and saw her Champagne concern grow and grow. The key to her initial success was the Russian market—Möet and then later Pommery had a better grip on Britain—although the endless ups and downs of trade during the Napoleonic wars meant that her market often threatened to vanish overnight. Her shrewd gamble (and it was a gutsy one) was to secretly send a huge shipment to Russia just as peace was achieved in 1814. By not waiting for the formal lifting of trade embargoes, she found a country ready to celebrate with her Champagne, and zero competition. Mazzeo relates Clicquot’s perilous international challenges especially well—sprintingly—and her discussion of Champagne technique is also blessedly painless. That’s no small feat.
But there are a few bubbles to pop. This isn’t a very deep study—the depth, one might say, is closer to a coupole than a flute. Mazzeo is stuck with the fact that there’s little solid detail about Clicquot’s daily life, or thoughts or beliefs. No diary, no memoir, and not many remembrances from third parties. She was a celebrated name, but not a celebrity. One way to deal with this would have been to create a tapestry of denser textural detail around Clicquot. Mazzeo writes, for example, that references to Clicqout Champagne are to be found throughout classic literature—why then relegate examples to the notes section? Why not weave them into the book itself?
Mazzeo instead falls back on novelized touches of speculation: In a breathless opening rendered with rich cinematic feel, little Barbe-Nicole is rescued from her convent school and smuggled back to her anxious, prosperous family through seething Revolutionary crowds in the streets of Reims. The only problem is that, as Mazzeo admits, this may actually have been Barbe-Nicole’s sister. Oh. She often pauses to have Clicquot savor a moment of domestic feeling or social power as if she were a cougar out of Danielle Steele: “Barbe-Nicole caught the twinkling, knowing eye of her father across the room and she smiled back at him wryly.” Not implausible, although what’s to say she didn’t turn and suppress a gassy Champagne burp? I could have used a little more of Balzac’s hard glint of ambition and money. Mazzeo cites the reminiscence of a man who met the ancient Widow near the end of her life: ”a dwarfish, withered old woman … whose soul was in business, scanning over each day to her last the ledger of the commercial house to which she had given her name.” Mightn’t this be the true Widow Clicquot practically from the getgo?
