The Widow Clicquot

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  These Russian prisoners of war did not suffer long as captives. The French victory was short-lived. A week later, the French were forced to retreat, and the Russians again occupied the town. Finally, in mid-March, a desperate and furious Napoléon vowed that he would sleep that night in Reims, the city that could make kings. In making this vow, Napoléon was confident that he would be graciously welcomed at the Hôtel Ponsardin, where he and Joséphine had stayed before, the guests of the charming Nicolas, in more promising times.

  But Nicolas Ponsardin did not need a comet and the superstitious sensibilities of the peasants, who read in it a chilling portent, to know that Napoléon would not be emperor for long. The coalition was closing in on the French, and defeat seemed inevitable. Still, in the past, Napoléon had succeeded despite insurmountable odds. Who was to say that he might not manage to do so again?

  Not for the first time in his eventful life, Nicolas found himself in a delicate and dangerous political position, unwilling to offend Napoléon in the event he was victorious but unprepared to align himself too closely to a man who was not likely to remain in power long. Even worse might be the consequences if the city fell to the emperor’s enemies. It was Napoléon who had made Nicolas mayor, as a mark of his special favor. If the political winds shifted in a new direction, it would now make him the target of retribution. So when it was hinted that he should leave town, Nicolas prepared to do the sensible thing. Hedging his bet, he wrote Napoléon a letter, promising that the city of Reims and those who governed it were his stauch allies, and then he hightailed it out of town, leaving the emperor to take his chances. Well in advance of Napoléon’s arrival, Nicolas called for his carriage, left word with his children, and went out of town on an extended business trip to the remote city of Le Mans. He did not return to Reims until well after the curtain had closed on the final act.

  In the small hours of the morning, long before the dawn, Napoléon passed through the triumphal gates of the city, the same gates that once welcomed kings on their way to their coronation. Despite the darkness and the cold, the city was alive with excitement, and great crowds gathered along the route to welcome the emperor with exuberant cries and banners and speeches and all the pomp and circumstance that could be arranged at such short notice and after years of war. It was Barbe-Nicole who greeted the emperor at the door of the Hôtel Ponsardin, which her father had deserted. She assured Napoléon that the family was waiting to welcome him only a short distance away, at the home of her brother, Jean-Baptiste.

  What must Napoléon have thought when he learned that the Hôtel Ponsardin was empty? It is hard to imagine that a man as astute as Napoléon failed to understand the lack of confidence the absence implied. Or perhaps it did not much matter. Nicolas had charged his son with meeting his social and political responsibilities, so Napoléon was welcomed as a personal guest of the family into the elegant mansion on rue de Vesle where Jean-Baptiste lived with his wife, Thérèse.

  Napoléon stayed with the Ponsardin family for three nights. For Jean-Baptiste and Thérèse these were thrilling days, filled with important visitors and elegant dinners and the excitement of being at the center of world events. They were also stressful days. Entertaining the emperor in the midst of a war he was in the process of losing was a dicey business.

  Thérèse was frantic that her hospitality should be graceful and exacting. As was the custom, she herself filled the emperor’s pillows with the softest new down. Jean-Baptiste, meanwhile, must have perceived how politically delicate his father’s absence was. And despite Barbe-Nicole’s disdain for the emperor and for the commercial ruin he had created, she was far too wise to complicate the family’s plight by giving any appearance of disrespect. Only their sister, Clémentine, who was one of Reims’s reigning socialites, perhaps welcomed the honor without misgiving.

  As the Ponsardin family entertained Napoléon during those fading days of the French Empire, he surely drank some of Barbe-Nicole’s champagne. Indeed, he must have tasted that divine vintage of 1811. For a guest as powerful as the emperor of France, for a man known for his love of fine champagnes, Barbe-Nicole would have offered nothing less. She would have done it just to prove to him that Jean-Rémy Moët and Memmie Jacquesson were not the only ones who knew how to craft something marvelous.

  She is unlikely to have explained to Napoléon the symbolism of the comet insignia branded on the end of each of her corks in that year’s vintage, a comet said by those who worked the vineyards and the fields to prophesy the end of his empire. In the weeks and months that were to come, Napoléon must have remembered those days with the Ponsardins and the champagne of the young Widow Clicquot as the last taste of victory itself, for within three weeks, his meteoric career would be at an end, and Napoléon would find himself stripped of power and sent into a forced exile.

  First, however, he would see Jean-Rémy. It must have annoyed Barbe-Nicole to no end. When Napoléon left the Ponsardin family home, he headed directly to Épernay, where he visited one last time with his old friend. Despite the champagne that they undoubtedly shared, it was a somber and serious occasion. Napoléon was too experienced in war not to understand the odds he faced.

  The story goes that Jean-Rémy found his friend intently studying a map. Looking up to find Jean-Rémy, Napoléon quietly unpinned his own Legion of Honor, the small but ornate five-starred cross that signified noble rank in imperial France. Napoléon then pinned it on his friend’s coat, saying only: “If fate intervenes and dashes my hopes, I want at least to be able to reward you for your loyal service and steadfast courage, but above all for the excellent reputation you have achieved, both here and abroad, for the wines of France.” Napoléon was a wine lover to the end. And he was loyal to Jean-Rémy, as always.

  Napoléon abdicated the throne of France in early April, and the Russians were briefly in Reims again, celebrating the end of the war in boisterous spirits. Barbe-Nicole had reason to celebrate as well. Russian officers toasting the end of the long campaign toasted with her champagne. Everywhere in the city, “Russian officers…lifted the champagne glass to their lips. It was said even that many of them preferred the popping of the bottle of Rheims to the cannon of the Emperor.” After long years of war, the British were no less exuberant. Lord Byron wrote to his friend Thomas Moore in the second week of April, “We clareted and champagned till two.” Already, champagne was on its way to becoming another word for mass-culture celebration.

  Barbe-Nicole was simply glad that the war would soon be over and she would soon be free to gratify the Russian love of fine French wines. “At last the time has come,” she said, “when, after the sufferings our town has known, we may breathe freely and hope for a general and permanent peace, and consequently for commercial activity which has stagnated for too long. Thank God I have been spared. My properties and cellars are intact, and I am ready to resume business with all the activity that recent changes will allow.”

  That the Napoleonic Wars should have ended in the Champagne region is mere happenstance, but it was a pivotal moment in the history of this wine, a moment that forged its cultural identity. Champagne wine was already enjoyed as the drink of festivity. It had been since the earliest days of its history. But a hundred little obstacles had impeded its broad commercial appeal. For centuries, it had been the wine only of the wealthiest and most discerning of connoisseurs, and the total production in France at its prewar height had never been more than four hundred thousand bottles. Within decades of Napoléon’s defeat, it would multiply more than tenfold, to over five million.

  However much Barbe-Nicole despised Napoléon, his support for the industry and nearly fifteen years of reforms, which had changed everything from the laws of Europe to the condition of roads throughout the empire, made a different future—and her own fame—possible. It was the events that took place that spring in the Champagne, the occasion for half a million soldiers and minor British lords to celebrate the end of an empire with sparkling wine, that transformed champagne into
an international cultural phenomenon, rich with universal symbolism and meaning.

  Still, when the Russian czar Alexander ordered provisions for a banquet meant to fete three hundred thousand troops at Camp Vertus, the champagne came from the cellars of Jean-Rémy. That even the czar favored her competitor must have been irritating. Perhaps this preference was what focused her energies on getting back to business immediately and recapturing her own share of the Russian market that she and Louis—and François before them—had worked so hard to open.

  It would take time to work out the political settlements, but when the end of the war finally came, as she now knew it would, it would be a new beginning for her champagne enterprise. She seized the initiative. By the end of April, even before the peace was yet certain, she had opened her cellars and had returned to work, checking the long rows of casks to see how the vintage had fared, making adjustments and taking notes, and beginning the arduous process of disgorging some of the wines.

  If the occupation of Reims had not been a boon, it had not been a disaster, either. “Thanks are due to Heaven,” she wrote. “I do not have any losses to regret, and I am too fair to grumble about expenses from which no one will be saved.” She sent her workmen back to the vineyards in earnest, all with an eye toward the future, when the trade bans on France would finally be lifted and she could begin shipping her wines again.

  Barbe-Nicole was not one to wait passively on fortune, however. She had begun almost instantly planning a daring enterprise, the execution of which would prove to be the greatest gamble of her career. She was at the crossroads of her life, and she knew it. The moment the Bourbon kings of France were restored to the throne, and working in absolute secrecy, with only her trusted salesman, Louis, and their Russian distributor, Monsieur Boissonet, as her conspirators, Barbe-Nicole decided to run the blockades one final time, in advance of the formal restoration of international trade.

  As she had discovered that spring, the Russians adored her sweeter, fortified champagnes, and if only she could get her wines there before any of her competitors, there was a nation waiting for its first legal taste of French champagne. It was risky and dangerous, and if she failed, this would be the end.

  The stakes could not have been higher. It was a large shipment, and she was sending it without permission or security. She was breaking the law and breaking all the rules of common sense. The plan was to deliver several thousand bottles of champagne by chartered ship, first to the open port of Königsberg (present-day Kalingrad, Russia) and then, the instant the trade ban was lifted, immediately onward the short distance to Russia. If the cargo was discovered traveling without a license, it would be confiscated and destroyed—and much of that amazing vintage of 1811 would be lost forever.

  Worse, if her local competitors were to learn of her venture, or if they happened to be plotting one of their own simultaneously, the result would be immediate ruin. Nothing would be more infuriating than Jean-Rémy getting the upper hand in Russia once again. As Barbe-Nicole knew, success depended not just on getting her wines to Russia but on getting them there first, weeks before other shipments could arrive, when hers would be the only French champagne available in the ports and markets.

  The moment Napoléon abdicated, she began writing letters, trying to charter a ship in secret. In mid-April came the encouraging news from Louis that Monsieur Rondeaux, a shipping merchant in Rouen, could help her. There was a ship ready to load her wines and take them to Russia, if she could get them to Rouen quickly. In the event Russia was still inaccessible, they had devised elaborate contingency plans. The wines could surely be sold at Königsberg or sent on to other ports along the English Channel if needed. She had learned the lessons from Amsterdam well: Never again would she let wines go to waste in warehouses.

  Louis would travel with the shipment. Her first plan had been to send six thousand bottles of wine. Then, at the last minute there were maddening delays. Although the foreign troops had left Reims and the wines could travel safely, there were few local men able to help with the cellar work after the long war. “You know,” she told Louis, “our wines must be properly cared for and rebottled before being shipped and since I have not enough capable workmen to complete this indispensable operation, I must delay deliveries.” Finally, when it came time to load the wines onto the wagon destined for Paris and then on to Rouen, the final count was 10,550 bottles of her finest champagne. The news had just arrived that the blockades on the Baltic ports had been lifted, although bottled French wines were still banned in Russia.

  Still, she was sure that the Russians would welcome her wines. Soon, other brokers would also be sending shipments. But it might take them several weeks to arrange a ship, and she had a head start. It was a race for Russia. Jean-Rémy was already writing to Count Tolstoy, the grand marshal of the imperial palace in Saint Petersburg, requesting permission to send the czar thirty thousand bottles of sparkling champagne, and within weeks he would send several thousand bottles to Russia for the open market, simply on the chance they would pass customs unimpeded.

  On May 20, Louis and the wines left Reims for Paris, on the way to Rouen and the seacoast. The anxiety was at fever pitch. There was no way of knowing if other competitors had come up with the same idea. Perhaps they were already too late. Perhaps the wines would be lost long before they ever reached Russia, victims of uncertain times and a long sea voyage, undertaken far too late in the warm spring season to make any winemaker confident.

  Louis would be traveling for weeks with the wines, in harsh conditions, and in Paris he stopped to purchase provisions for the trip, staples like dried ham and biscuits, tea, and apples. He would also need to arrange for his own bed and personal comforts on the ship. Barbe-Nicole was sympathetic. Among the cases of wine, she had also slyly included a present for Louis—some things to feed his “gullet,” she told him. It was a hamper filled with small luxuries: one and a half dozen bottles of excellent red wine from nearby Cumières, half a dozen bottles of cognac to warm the chilly evenings, and a small, leather-bound copy of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the famous Spanish tale of an adventurous knight determined to fight even the most foolhardy battles. Given the risks they were taking and the recklessness of their own adventure, it was a witty present, just Barbe-Nicole’s sort of dry humor.

  Finally, at eleven o’clock on the night of June 10, Louis and the shipment set sail on the Zes Gebroeders, under the command of Captain Cornelius. The crispness of the night air belied what Louis found belowdecks. The ship was infested with lice and vermin, and he was so anxious for the fate of the fragile and pressurized cases of wine rocking in the hold that he determined to sleep on rough nights with the cargo. It could hardly be worse. As Louis knew only too well, the bottles were prone to breakage, and they could shatter with a remarkable force, destroying an entire case at a time.

  For the sleepless Louis, it was a long trip. For Barbe-Nicole back home in Reims, the nights and days were even longer. On July 3, nearly a month later, the Zes Gebroeders finally crept into the harbor of Königsberg, a Baltic seaport then in Prussian territory. It had been a rough and increasingly warm crossing, and it might already all be over for them. The wines might have burst. Or the changes in the temperature might have caused the wines to go cloudy and ropey. After years of war and terribly depressed sales, there was no margin of error for the company any longer.

  The morning when the wines were unloaded dawned stiflingly hot, and Louis opened the first case with a heavy heart. Amazingly, the first bottles that he drew from the packing baskets were absolutely crystalline, and there had been no breakages. It was the same for the second case and the third. Their condition was perfect, “as strong as the wines of Hungary, as yellow as gold, and as sweet as nectar,” he wrote. Best of all, “Our ship is the first, in many years, to travel to the North, and from the port of Rouen, filled with the wine of the Champagne.”

  Their secret ruse had succeeded. None of Barbe-Nicole’s competitors had guessed her plan
, and the champagne made by the Widow Clicquot created a frenzied competition among purchasers within days of its arrival. Before Louis could have the shipment forwarded to the imperial city of Saint Petersburg—even before the cases were fully unloaded from the Zes Gebroeders—clients besieged him at his hotel, begging to be allowed to purchase just a few bottles. On the docks, wine merchants nearly came to blows as the stock apportioned to Königsberg dwindled. With the cunning business acumen that Barbe-Nicole so admired in him, Louis wrote playfully that he was now deliberately playing hard to get and asking prices that she never would have believed possible—an astonishing 5.5 francs a bottle—the equivalent of more than $100 and equal to what she paid her vineyard laborers for an entire week of their backbreaking work.

  Learning of their triumph in the dim light of her office, Barbe-Nicole might have brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek and let herself enjoy a slow, broad smile of satisfaction. In that moment, she must have thought about François and about the long summer days when they rode through the fields of the Champagne to inspect the small vineyards at Bouzy or when they simply stopped to look out over the hills in silence. Making this wine had been his dream, and here in front of her was the proof that her faith in that dream had not been wasted. Even Barbe-Nicole could not have dreamed what else was still to come. On this first evening of her success, when she was only just beginning to understand that she was on the verge of something big, something wonderful, she might have indulged her fancy for a moment. Then she put pen to paper, already planning the immediate departure of another shipment of her glorious champagne.