January 21, 2025 • 37 mins
The Champagne Lady: How Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Revolutionized an Industry
Got a story? Email shechangedhistory@gmail.com
In this episode, Vicky and Simon dive into the remarkable story of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, also known as the 'Champagne Lady.' Amid personal loss and political turmoil in the early 1800s, Barbe-Nicole took over her late husband’s failing wine business and transformed it into a global champagne empire. From leveraging her widow status for marketing to pioneering innovative wine-making techniques, her journey is a testament to audacity and resilience. The episode explores her strategic moves, the challenges she faced, and her lasting legacy in the champagne industry. Additionally, the hosts share personal anecdotes and encourage listeners to contribute their own stories of inspiring women.
Sources today are:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230301-the-little-known-history-of-champagne
https://www.badasswomen.de/barbe-nicole-clicquot-ponsardin/
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/31/madame-clicquot-france-woman-champagne
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-widow-who-created-the-champagne-industry-180947570/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code
00:00 Introduction and Check in
00:51 New Beginnings: Marriage and Mental Well-being
02:23 A French Tale: The Story of Barb Nicole Ponsardin
03:13 The Widow's Gamble: Saving the Business
13:42 Learning the Trade: From Apprentice to Business Owner
19:24 Struggles in a Male-Dominated Industry
20:40 Facing Bankruptcy and Personal Turmoil
23:26 A Calculated Gamble: Smuggling Champagne
27:26 Innovations and Market Expansion
31:09 Legacy and Leadership
34:37 Personal Anecdotes and Closing Remarks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
video1530181378 (00:08):
yeah a while ago I had one of those you get
uh little pedals to go under thedesk to cycle.
Oh I haven't seen that.
That's a good idea.
I quickly fell out of love withthem.
Oh why?
Why?
Because he wants He hit thedesk.
It's just weird.
I just didn't want to, turns outI didn't want to cycle while I
was sitting down and working.
Oh.
Which I think is prettyreasonable.
Who knew?
(00:29):
Who knew?
Um, I don't have anything ashalf as fancy.
I'm lucky if my laptop turns on.
I don't own anything else, soyeah.
Hi Simon! Hi Vicky, how youdoing?
I'm good, how are you?
I'm good, yeah, very well,thanks.
Yeah, yeah, busy, busy.
Glad to be here.
back into the swing of the newyear.
(00:51):
That's true, you enter thispodcast married, which is very
exciting.
I know, the first podcast is amarried one.
Ah, you got the jewels.
Yeah, she put a ring on it.
You really did.
Good.
I'm amazed at what a difference,this is a sort of unrelated,
well it's related to me beingmarried.
I'm amazed at what a differencebeing married has made to my
(01:12):
general sort of mental wellbeing, because I historically
have really bad abandonmentanxiety.
And I assume that, like, anyonewho likes me, soon they're going
to realise I'm a dickhead andjust go.
But now, I've put quite aserious administrative obstacle
in the way.
You've really put that hurdleup.
I just don't think it's worthher leaving.
(01:38):
I'm just way more relaxed.
It's great.
That's great.
That's great.
And also marriages should talkabout that more.
You never get that as a pro ofmarriage.
You get the day, you get thedress, you get the food, get the
gifts.
You never get, you've clawedthem in now.
You've got your claws in now,you're not going to go any
further.
(01:59):
Very interesting.
Oh, good.
Well, I'm pleased you're feelingsecure in yourself.
That's always nice.
Oh, thanks very much.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Anyway, enough about me.
I've been just talking about thewedding non stop for the last
two weeks.
You need to milk it.
Yeah, well, I feel like I'vebecome the dullest man in
history.
(02:20):
You've got a story for us today.
I do.
And it's a French story.
So I apologize in advance for mylack of pronunciation.
But it's a very cool story andwe'd be silly not to talk about
it.
So here we go.
Have you ever been faced with amoment in life where absolutely
everything you've worked for isteetering on the brink of
(02:43):
collapse?
A moment where the weight of theworld is pressing heavy on your
shoulders, leaving you nowhereto turn?
Imagine this, it's 1814, Europeis in turmoil with Napoleon and
your business, your latehusband's legacy, is facing
imminent bankruptcy.
You've lost your husband, yourinheritance, and your reputation
(03:04):
is on the line.
To top it all off, your businesspartner has abandoned ship.
The walls are closing in.
What do you do?
For Barb Nicole Ponsardin, thiswasn't a hypothetical scenario,
it was her reality.
But instead of succumbing todespair, she made a daring
gamble.
A move so audacious it would notonly save her business, but
(03:27):
would revolutionise an entireindustry and cement her place in
history.
This is the story of the womanbehind Woe Cliquot, a woman who
turned darkness into dazzlingsuccess.
The Champagne Lady.
She's the Champagne Lady.
Villa Vos Cliquot, excellent.
You know, you know.
So, our sources today are a BBCarticle, which is how I found
(03:49):
out about, Ponsardin, called theLittle Known History of
Champagne.
There's also a Badass Womenarticle, which is a great blog.
Recommend you go and check thatout.
The Guardian did an article onthis back in 2014.
Smithsonian Magazine, um, theydid an article on this called
The Widow Who Created theChampagne Industry.
And I'm also leaning on aBritannica article about the
(04:11):
Napoleonic Code and conflict atthat time.
this is Barb Nicole.
Ponsardin, it's reallyimportant, her surname, we'll
come on to that in a minute.
she was born 1777.
So this is Les Mis territory,right?
This is where we're in, okay?
it's probably important to note,she comes from Wealth, her
father, was an affluent textileindustrialist in a town called
(04:33):
Rims, R E I M S.
I can't roll my R's either.
This is a small town in France,but it's one that's quite
entrepreneurial.
It's got like a few businessleaders in there.
so she's born in the years thatrun up to the French revolution,
which began in 1789 and lasteduntil 1794.
Barb Nicole.
(04:53):
her Childhood was heavilyinfluenced by the political
leanings of her father, who wascalled, Jean Nicholas Felipe
Ardin.
And so he switched from aroyalist to a Jacobin, and this
is basically a club, it's aninfluential political club, of
the French Revolution, and itwas named after the place, where
(05:15):
they met, so the club was calledJacobin, and it was kind of like
this underbelly subculture.
of revolution.
So it's, she must have heardabout this at the dining table.
So he went from being reallyloyal to his country, his king.
And then over time throughouther childhood, she heard that
narrative change.
So it's very, interesting.
(05:36):
Also, her dad, was clearly,attuned to this kind of thing
because her family, BarbNicole's family, was able to
escape the revolution relativelyunscathed.
So that was quite rare for, thattime, especially people of
affluent positions becausethey're so close to the
monarchy, right?
Yeah.
Um, and then, um, this bit inthe article made me laugh, next
(06:00):
door to her growing up.
When they say next door, this isbasically the next chateau
along.
I don't think it's like nextdoor, like me and you next door.
Yeah, the nearest living person.
Yeah.
so the next state along was theClicquot family, which had, the
head of the family calledFelipe.
So Felipe Clicquot was, also rana successful textile business as
(06:24):
well.
So his, her dad and the nextdoor neighbor were kind of like
local business rivals, right?
So he was like the maincompetitor to, Barb Nicole's
father.
However, you'd think, Romeo andJuliet vibes, right?
You'd think Romeo and Julietvibes.
It's the complete opposite.
So the two patriarchs are like,we could join up and then we
(06:46):
could become like the dominatingforce for this part of France.
Excellent.
So they flipped on his head,which is great.
So it was an arranged marriage,between, Clico and, Ponsardin.
So the, she gets married to theson called Francois.
Um, this was while therevolution was going on, by the
(07:07):
way.
So it was really cute littledetail is that they had a
wedding service, not in abeautiful barn in the heritage
countryside, Simon, but in asecret hiding in a cellar.
That's where they got married.
So it was a secret wedding.
Yeah, it's proper sort ofwartime wedding, isn't it?
Yeah.
(07:30):
It turns out that Francois andBarbie Nicole, they got on and
that was basically going to beher life.
Like with many stories we cover,it was, you know, she could have
had a very easy, comfortablelife and that was that.
this is because under Napoleon,married, or unmarried women were
subject to their husband's orfather's decisions.
(07:52):
Women could not vote, theycouldn't work, they couldn't
make their own money And becauseshe's affluent, she kind of
could have become a Kep woman.
That was her trajectory.
One of the turning points inthat is actually her husband,
Francois, who instead of wantingto take over the textile
business, which his father haddone this collaboration with, he
was more interested in thefamily's side hustle, which was
(08:14):
wine.
So they had a vineyard becausethey're in a French chateau.
And, his Dad didn't really seethe point of the vineyard.
He was like, it's a nice tohave, I'm not getting much money
from it.
But because you had to charterships, so they were shipping out
their textiles, he was like, ifthere's a bit of room on the
(08:35):
ship and I haven't got enoughtextiles, what I'll do is I'll
top it up with wine and then I'mmaking the most of my exports,
right?
I can explore it, make somemoney.
So he was seeing it more as aside hustle.
and just try not to waste moneyon a ship, which I've never
chartered a ship, but I imaginethat's a smart move.
Most people's side hustles arelike they make bracelets or
(08:55):
something.
Yeah, they're making cards inthe evening and they're not
chartering ships.
So Felipe, who is Francois dad,wasn't very happy with, Francois
trying to expand the winebusiness.
He couldn't really see that itwas going to work because the,
(09:15):
Napoleon, wars were going on.
So the Napoleonic wars werehappening.
This is like early 1800s now,where Napoleon was basically
fighting anyone and everyone hecould get his hands on.
It's a really interesting, in myhead, Napoleon is much closer to
the Trump and the musks of theworld today.
You know what I mean?
(09:35):
Just like anyone he couldoffend, he was like, of course,
he's going for it.
Yeah, that's fine.
Um, it's a myth that he wasshort as well.
Is it?
Yeah, he was just like averageheight for people back then.
People back then were naturallyshorter.
What we should do is start thesame rumor about Elon Musk and
(09:56):
then centuries later, peoplewill be like, that Musk, he's
tiny.
Tiny, yeah, he's only 4 foot 2.
Tiny little man.
So Felipe's not on board, butFrancois Plauzon, he learns the
wine trade as much as he can.
And also Barb Nicola, she, hergrandmother actually worked in a
(10:18):
winemaking company for a littlewhile.
So she had a little bit ofknowledge, Barb but not loads.
it turns out that Felipe wascorrect.
So he was like, I told you soson, you shouldn't have started
this wine business.
It didn't go well.
There was, it was troubled, theyweren't making much money.
And then tragically in 1805, sixyears into their marriage,
(10:41):
Francois falls ill suddenly witha fever and then he dies 12 days
later.
He leaves behind Barbara Nicoleand their three year old
daughter.
So how old was Barbara Nicole?
Um, she was 27, I think, whenthey got married.
(11:04):
So now she's a widow, singlemum, young kid, and this failing
wine business.
Yeah, this is the interestingthing.
You, that is the perception,right?
Is that you've been left hungand dry.
You've got this massive debt.
but what happened was things gotreally interesting.
(11:26):
It turns out having a deadhusband, being a widow at that
time was a woman's ticket tofreedom.
So that was the loophole of theNapoleon code was that she
wasn't married as she wasn'tunmarried.
She was widowed which meant allthose things I listed earlier
didn't apply to her anymore aslong as she didn't remarry Wow,
(11:49):
okay.
It was seen as this legalloophole where she was free to
run a business Yeah, she wasfree to work.
She never was free to workbefore she was free to own her
money and spend her money and doeverything all without a man's
permission.
Um, voting was still a no no,but she had this financial
freedom that she's never hadbefore, even though that was
(12:11):
bankruptcy.
Was there like a massive spateof wives poisoning their
husbands in the Napoleonictimes?
there's a really interestingpodcast that I think you'll like
called Lucy Walsall's LadyKillers.
Oh yeah.
It's a BBC podcast.
And she talks about, um,poisoning a lot.
(12:31):
Because it was the easiest thingfor women to do.
So I don't think you're far off.
so Felipe actually does announcethat after his son's death, that
would be the end of the winebusiness, because he wasn't that
on board with the wine businessanyway.
But she convinces her father inlaw, Barbe Nicole, to let her
(12:53):
manage the business.
She convinces him to risk herinheritance, even though it
hasn't gone well at this point.
She's saying, give me somemoney, I'll reinvest it, and
I'll make this work.
And how cool is that?
I suppose it is, yeah.
Because it's failing, becauseshe's a woman, because it's her
father, it's not even herfather, her father in law's
(13:15):
business.
And he's not involved anyway.
And whatever she said must haveworked, she must have been
really convincing, because hesaid, yeah, He was like, all
right, we'll give it a go.
and bear in mind, she's got nobusiness background.
She knows a little bit aboutwine.
She knows what wine is.
She's drank some.
Okay, that's like me opening abookshop.
I've read some books.
Okay, I've got this.
(13:37):
to be fair, Felipe says you canopen the business.
That's fine.
But I want you to learn thetrade.
So what she does, she goes backto school and she does a four
year apprenticeship to learn thetrade of winemaking.
So she spends all her times invineyards, in cellars, learning
to craft the wine.
she's the first woman ever,French woman ever, sorry, to do
(14:00):
that.
to have education,apprenticeship yeah.
So she's learning things likeremoving sediment, adding
ingredients, how to make itclear, how to bottle all that
kind of stuff.
Some of those processes arestill in use today.
So she's got that knowledge,right?
She's there.
In 1810, the business officiallybecomes hers.
(14:21):
It goes back into her name,which is great.
And from the beginning, BarMicole used her widowed status
as a marketing tool.
So she was like, well, I'm goingto spin this on its head and
people are going to want it.
So that's why it's called, theCliquot Ponsardin.
Um, Verve V E U V E meanstranslated.
(14:43):
Oh, wow.
Yeah, uh, Kliko is her marriedname, Bonsardin is her, Maiden
name.
Maiden name.
And, um, she wanted her maidenname on there.
That's my, I never knew that, Ijust assumed Verve.
I was wondering when thecharacter Verve was going to
come into this.
I didn't realize it meant widow.
Yeah.
It's her.
That's awesome.
The reason she chose that isbecause it came, it gave a
(15:05):
certain kind of respectabilityto the beverage.
because the wine was getting abit of a bad reputation, it was
associated with, like today, ifyour brand is associated with
boomers, sometimes that's notgreat.
It was like that, but in the1800s, so it was like Royal
Courts of Old, it wasn't reallyseen as, you know.
(15:27):
Um, it's just a bit sort ofdowdy and uncool.
A bit uncool.
Yeah.
So she wanted to remake that.
Yeah, and it worked.
It gave the bottle and the brandclout and it worked so well.
The other champagne producersgot on board, which is why
Champagne.
You have a lot of verbs.
(15:47):
You have Vernet, veloc, and youhad different ones, and also you
had copycats of her own brand.
Yeah.
Because that's how popular itwas.
Even though these people weren'twidows, they weren't women.
Yeah.
Completely right.
Off brand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, um, you know that bitin Friends where Phoebe thinks
her grandmother is, Miss Nestleor something, because that's
(16:07):
what she's been told.
It's that.
I've got two little side notes.
One is almost entirelyunrelated, but back decades and
decades ago, when Japanesemanufacturing wasn't as trusted
as it is today, like these days,we think of Japanese made goods
as, um, really high quality,reliable Toyota, Sony, all of
(16:30):
that higher end back then theyweren't.
And it was stuff made in theUSA, which was.
considered brilliant.
so Japan renamed a town that hadloads of manufacturing in USA,
spelt USA, so they could putmade in USA.
And also, lots of, I found outquite recently, because Kat's
(16:52):
vegan, and loads of wine is notvegan friendly.
I didn't know this till Cateither.
I had no idea.
It's because a lot of thesetechniques that have been in use
for a couple of hundred yearsfor getting rid of the sediment
and impurities, two things arereally good for doing that.
One is egg white, and you dothat as well if you're making, a
(17:13):
consommé.
Or something where you're sortof making a really intensely
flavoured bisque.
liquid in the kitchen and youwant to get those impurities
out, you'll often put egg whitein and that'll collect them up
and then you can just skim itoff the top.
No way.
That's one thing, and the otheris fish bones, so it's often
filtered through fish bones.
Oh, these are not vegan friendlyoptions.
Really not vegan friendly, no.
(17:34):
Ah, I see.
Because you just think grape,veg, don't you?
You just think grape,vegetarian, you're fine.
There's fruit juice in it.
Yeah, it's grape, isn't it?
Crazy.
Ah, I see.
so this is a known marketingtechnique, isn't it?
It's giving anything to giveyour brand oomph and
credibility.
(17:55):
Yeah.
So, you know, she was a clevercookie and no one told her to do
that.
She did that.
She came up with that herself,which is amazing.
The following February, herfather-in-law invested a further
80,000 francs.
Okay.
Which is about, 350,000 eurostoday, I think I read.
Wow.
So a huge chunk.
Oh yeah.
And she ended up going in intopartnership with someone called,
(18:16):
Alexandre.
Forno, because he had experiencein assemblage, so he was able to
operationalize that a bitbetter.
Okay.
so you could really scale up theproduction for her.
That's it.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm backtrackingslightly, but it's amazing.
So many of these stories we findthat, them being a woman really
(18:38):
hampers their effort to getthings off the ground to give
them the credibility and Ithought winemaking like a really
traditional old French thingjust dominated by men did she
come up against much likeestablishment pushback or you'll
see a bit later on that she'svery good at positioning herself
in the right positions.
(18:59):
So, I think some of it, yes, sheis the brand and the pretty lady
on the bottle, but I think she'svery private.
And she's very good at puttingalmost like a Fort Knox around
her to be able to protect.
So I think that's what protectedit.
she was the puppet master.
You know what I mean?
I think she was pulling thestrings in the background.
(19:20):
So I think that was her strategyto come up against that.
And a lot, like a lot of thestories we have, The sort of
featured woman is almostantagonistic with their, I don't
know if that's the way to phraseit, but like antagonistic with
their femininity.
And it's a, it's a, You won'tlet me do this because I'm a
woman, so I'm going to freakingshow you what I can do.
(19:41):
I love it.
I love that attitude.
Fantastic attitude to have, butshe seems to be playing it
slightly differently.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because she's playing a longterm game.
As well, because what we'redoing at the minute, she's had
one investment from her fatherin law, she's had another 80,
000 francs coming in, but she'sstill going, it's still pushing,
(20:05):
and the reason she's having sucha hard time is because of the
political context we're in.
So Europe was at war, there waslots of naval blockades
hampering trade all the waythrough, because trade was
mainly by sea, not plane.
And also Russia was a hugemarket at that time for,
champagne.
And in the summer of 1812,Russia basically put an embargo
(20:30):
on French bottled wine.
So they were like, put that doordown because of Napoleon's wars
and stuff.
so she's really struggling.
Sales have dropped to 10, 000bottles a year and bankruptcy
again is looming.
On top of everything, this isthe point where her business He
gives up, he leaves thebusiness.
(20:52):
Like I said, it's, I don't thinkit's necessarily anything of our
own doing.
I think it is just the politicalcontext.
I think she's in a luxuryproduct market.
She's in, a time where globaltrade is the only thing that's
going to expand your business.
and she's got left, right andcenter.
No, you can't go there.
No, you can't go there.
Oh, it's really expensive totransport things through land,
(21:13):
but we can't lay your ships inand all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
So it's, 1840 now she's lost herhusband.
Her inheritance is gone becauseshe's risked it all.
She's risked the furtherinvestment.
Her business partner's gone.
You know, she's running out oftime, running out of options.
She's literally got nowhere toturn at this point.
(21:35):
On top of that, she is a woman.
She did have to fight for thischance.
She doesn't have the same rightsas men at that time.
Um, she also.
Need to be chaperoned places aswell.
So there's all these, like, it'snot easy.
She's in a really dark place.
and on top of that, people arejumping on what they call the
brand bandwagon in one of thearticles I read.
(21:58):
So, Jean Remy Moet is herbiggest and most arch rival and
he is on the up and up so thenext, the only logical step
really on the face of it isbankruptcy.
That is the only, I can'texpress how dark, this is.
Because.
Also, she's got to go back toher ex father-in-law and say, I
messed up.
(22:18):
I haven't done that.
I haven't done it.
I know you had vape in me, butI've let you down.
Can you imagine like the, thepersonal turmoil, it's just such
a more you businesses, you know?
Well, yeah.
I think we're coming up to 16years now.
Mm-hmm That the business hasbeen going and there's a lot of.
roller coasters.
(22:39):
And there's a lot of highs, alot of lows in that time.
And some of them on reflection,you realize your own fault or
your ego getting in the way or,things that at the time you
didn't know, you didn't know.
And some of it is just out ofcontrol.
And like even today, politicalBrexit is probably the best
example of how sort of politicallandscape can have such a
massive effect on businessesthat they, You can't even
(23:02):
necessarily plan for that well,and yeah, that's really tough.
And as if she hasn't got enoughto deal with, she's still going
to be chaperoned about the placeand all of that nonsense.
Like all these arbitraryrestrictions.
Yeah, and she's got a daughteron top of all this that she's
trying to bring up at the sametime.
like I said, the next logicalstep would be bankruptcy, but
(23:24):
not for Barbara Nicole.
She takes a gamble.
She is a calculated gamble, butit's a gamble nevertheless.
This is because, again, of thepolitical landscapes.
so we're in 1814, Napoleon'sforces have basically been
broken down.
They did invade Russia in 1812,but, Europe has pretty much
(23:44):
turned against Napoleon.
he's having to retreat back outof Russia.
Napoleon has offered to stepdown in favor of his son.
That offer, which is classic,Oh, it's not me.
I'm it's not the regime.
I'm the problem.
Like I've got someone else whocan step in.
Funnily enough, that offer wasrejected.
(24:05):
So Napoleon, stepped down and hewas sent into exile on a remote
Mediterranean island calledElba.
It didn't really last long.
He was only in exile for like ayear, but that's really not the
point.
And the point is that by Nicole,she was watching.
She was in the background.
She knew what was going tohappen.
She knew your Russia, is herbiggest market.
She knew what the capabilitieswas there.
(24:26):
Her upbringing of her fathertalking around the table,
switching from royalists.
All that kind of stuff that'srubbed off on her and she knows
what to watch out for, whatconversations to look out for.
And she knew at that moment, I'mgoing to save my business.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
And I love it.
She charters a ship.
It's a Dutch ship.
(24:47):
It sails on, the 6th of June,1814, just as the hostilities
were ending.
Remember, wine isn't allowed tobe exported, right, because of
all the trade.
So she smuggles it.
She hides it in, like coffeebarrels, so, yeah, yeah, so
she's disguising it.
she picks the best of her wine,so she picks the best 10, 550
(25:11):
bottles, and she gets the shipas far as Amsterdam, she said
that no other wine can go on theship.
It has to be my best wine.
It has to be this, thischampagne.
It has to be that.
And then she was like, I don'tcare, just get it on the ship
and leave the ship there.
And they were like, what do wedo when we get there?
And she was like, wait, wait forit.
And then as soon as peace wasdeclared, she carried on the
(25:33):
shipment to Russia.
Oh, that's amazing.
And she got it, got to Russia onthe 2nd of August, I think.
And she beat her competitors byweeks.
Oh, yeah.
So Rish has a light.
I want to celebrate.
I want to celebrate now.
Guess what comes in rolling?
Right, so the whole shipmentsold really quickly.
(25:54):
She then dispatched another go.
So she's already two shipmentsahead now of her competitors 12,
780 bottles were given a weeklater and off it went again the
Rish market were loving it.
It was at her feet and shedebuted her champagne in Russia
and Jacques Alexander Iannounced it was the only kind
(26:15):
of champagne he would drink.
What a testimonial.
Fabulous celebrity endorsement.
Can you believe?
And he's on the up and up.
He's just won the war.
He's having a great time.
You're going to do whatever hesays.
So this word of his preferenceand his, you know, like you say,
endorsement spread throughoutthe Russian court.
It was Basically the bestmarketing she could have hoped
(26:39):
for.
That's incredible.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
one of the historians in thearticle says she goes from being
a very minor player to a namethat everyone knows.
Everyone wanted her champagne.
Something similar happened withWedgwood Pottery in the UK, in
England.
A few things happened with him.
One is the, Mr.
Wedgwood came up with ways ofmaking colors and gilding on
(27:00):
there that nobody had donebefore.
But basically he just, he sent avery expensive set to the royal
family.
And they were like, this isbrilliant.
This is the dinner service thatwe want to use.
And then he made a cheaperversion that all of the sort of
middle classes in the hoi polloicould have because of that royal
association.
So that royal endorsement wasthen the foundation of.
(27:22):
of his business, and he justkept churning that model out.
Right, that's so clever, becauseSo, um, uh, Barbie Nicole, she
sees competitors coming in.
So she tries to make hers asspecial as possible.
She puts an anchor on the cork.
She puts the green wax seal thatwe used to see in our champagne
(27:43):
bottle.
She added that as an additionalfeature.
she made that iconic yellowlabel that we see nowadays.
So she does all this stuff andthen she wants to expand.
She's got two problems inexpanding.
Um, one is who does she expandto?
Because the Russian market is abig one.
And also how can she speed upthis process because people are
(28:04):
wanting her wine and champagnetakes forever to make.
What she does is because sheknows cause she got taught in
the apprenticeship.
Champagne is made by addingsugar and live yeast to bottles
of white wine, which is known assecondary fermentation.
And then this creates a sedimentand then you have to remove the
(28:26):
sediment, just like we weresaying with the vegan stuff.
because you want to get rid ofthe dead yeast.
normally what you'd have to doto that is you'd take the bottle
that you're working on of wineand then you'd pour it into
another bottle.
And then the The sediment wouldbe at the bottom.
And she was like, this has takenme ages.
I'm going to flip my kitchentable upside down.
(28:48):
I'm going to drill holes in mykitchen table, and then I'm
going to do all the work upsidedown.
So, What happened then ratherthan the sediment resting at the
bottom of the bottle, it restedat the neck of the bottle, which
meant she could just open it andthen just get the sediment out.
She didn't have to refill toremove the sediment because it
(29:09):
was already upside down.
She created that process.
That process is still in usetoday.
It's called riddling.
You can get a riddling rack andyou can rest your bottles upside
down so the sediment fills tothe bottom and then you don't
have to waste time transferringout.
(29:31):
And that meant that she couldproduce a better quality of
wine, and better qualitychampagne.
and also she could produce itquicker, quicker, quicker than
Moet.
Moet was very annoyed,apparently, publicly annoyed
that he couldn't work out howshe was producing this much
(29:51):
champagne this quickly.
And it'd still be good.
And it still be good.
and obviously she had a largenumber of employees working for
her.
And those employees kept itsecret.
Wow.
How did she do that?
How did she get them to keep itsecret?
That's some real loyalty, man.
This secret was kept fordecades.
(30:11):
We didn't know about Ritalinuntil way down the line.
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
That's amazing.
It's amazing that they kept itsecret and that there wasn't
sort of corporate espionage toMoët sending someone in there in
a fake moustache or something.
But what does that say about herleadership?
And what does that say about heras a businesswoman?
Yeah, you know, she obviouslyknew the value of it.
(30:34):
and just how do you foster thatsort of loyalty?
Right, and the culture, and thisis what I mean about, she must
have positioned people aroundher so well to be able to keep
that secret for so long.
So she has this ability toreally get the trust of people,
to get people on her team, onher side, like she did with her
father in law, to invest in afailing business that she had no
(30:57):
experience in.
She must have such a character,don't you think?
She must have such interpersonalskills to be able to do that.
It's quite exciting.
Yeah.
That's very cool.
Um, so this was it.
This was, uh, Her headstart,literally decades of a
headstart, against hercompetitors.
(31:17):
And it meant that, Barbie Nicolecould fill a absolute champagne
empire, which is very exciting.
Before her death in 1866, shewas exporting her champagne all
over the world.
She managed to get into the U Smarket.
um, because she was that reallysmart and clever, she didn't
just expand geographically.
She did what you were justtalking about, which is
(31:39):
expanding to the upper middleand the middle classes.
So she went for, differentdemographics as well, which
vastly increased her saleswhilst keeping it a luxury
product.
So fun fact, despite creating aglobal empire, she never once in
her lifetime ever left France.
(32:00):
So she's just therepuppeteering.
She's just there doing her ownthing.
The idea is that it was veryunseemly for a woman to do so,
particularly a lone womanwithout, like I said before,
without A husband, a dad orwhatever.
so there was a loophole in thiswidowhood, but not enough of a
loophole for her to do certainthings like travel.
(32:24):
Um, she was known to have be alittle bit of a flirt, which I
think any champagne empire headwould, but she didn't.
never remarried, which isabsolutely crucial because she
didn't want to pass her businesson to some guy.
Of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This all depends on remaining awidow.
Can you imagine building up thismassive champagne empire and
(32:46):
then you marry some geezer andhe gets it?
No, no, no, no.
So in her later years of life,she very much, I think she knew
how shrewd she was, and she knewwhat she, I think she was very
humble about it.
So in one of the letters shewrote to her later grandchild,
(33:07):
she said, quote, the world is ina petrel motion, and we must
invent the things of tomorrow.
One must go before others, bedetermined and exacting, and let
your intelligent direct yourlife.
Act with audacity.
Love that.
That is her parting words to hergrandchild.
How amazing is that?
That's so cool.
(33:28):
And she's, I mean, she must havehad such self confidence and
almost a sort of quietbelligerence about her ability.
I love this.
I'm going to start a winebusiness.
Have you ever made wine before?
Nope.
Do you know how to make wine?
Nope.
Know anything about business?
Nope.
Can you do it?
Yeah, you're damn right I can doit.
(33:49):
I can not only do it, but I canget all the funding for it.
And I can outdo thesecompetitors who've been around
for decades.
Yeah, I'd love that falsinessand that sort of just like
taking control of her destiny.
We've probably had herchampagne, so Well, it's still a
(34:11):
successful business right youcan visit their wine yards you
definitely know their label andthis is 200 years nearly later
That is the story of, BarbNicole Ponsardin.
Yeah, she's awesome.
Love it.
We love her.
Love it.
I've just seen a picture aswell.
Yeah.
She looks cheeky.
I was just about to say shelooks like a flirt.
(34:32):
She looks like a flirt or adrunkard, I'm not sure.
It's so funny.
The cutest thing happened atChristmas.
So, She's like the grandmotherof the family.
she's in early stage ofAlzheimer's, which is really
sad.
And, she forgot who Jamie wasover Christmas.
And when she first met Jamie,she openly said to me, Vicky,
Jamie is a dish.
(34:53):
Like, he's so dishy.
If I was, a decade younger,you'd have to watch out.
And then she'd forgotten, youknow, who Jamie was, but she
said the exact same thing overChristmas dinner.
Did she?
Oh, she's consistent with itthen.
And I was like, you still fancyJamie Hedgen, don't you?
You know, yeah, okay Jenna,okay.
(35:13):
We were talking about Jamie inthe office the other day.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, and just love howbasically anytime that you've
had a A single glass ofClicquot.
The first thing that you mentionis Isn't Jamie just gorgeous?
Oh, don't you just want to eathim up?
Oh, isn't he so handsome?
Oh, I love him.
I know.
(35:34):
I do.
Actually, we all agreed he's ahandsome fella.
He's a dish.
In the words of Janet, he is adish.
He's a handsome fella, and thenSia confirmed that you are
indeed sexy.
Me?
Yeah.
Was it ever in any doubt that isthe question?
Never, no.
You got it going on.
Thank you, thank you.
(35:55):
We're a sexy bunch here at SheShe's History, absolutely,
audio2530181378 (35:58):
well, fabulous champagne story.
Thank you, Vicky.
I enjoyed it.
Thank you.
It was a good one, wasn't it?
It was fun.
Yeah, if you, uh, enjoyed thatepisode, check out the many
others we now have available.
Please like and subscribe,comment, rate us, really helps
if you can rate us on ApplePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Uh, check out our Facebook page,She Changed History.
(36:20):
We have so many calls to action.
Oh, there's, I tell you what,there's a lot, if you're a good
listener, there's a lot for youto be doing.
Yeah, we just need to get theword out there.
But another thing you can do,not for sort of boosting our own
popularity, but just to beuseful, is if you've got any
stories yourself, whether theyare, famous women from history
(36:41):
or women in your life now,However, small or large the
difference, if you feel they'vechanged the world in some way,
we would love to hear aboutthem.
We're gathering, listenersstories for a nice little
episode on some more personal,personal stories to people.
So it'd be great to hear yoursuggestions for new episodes,
hear your personal experiences,get them on the Facebook page.
(37:03):
Yes, please.
Thank you so much for listeningand we'll see you next time.
See you soon.
Yep.
See you soon.
Bye.
Bye.
yeah a while ago I had one of those you get
uh little pedals to go under thedesk to cycle.
Oh I haven't seen that.
That's a good idea.
I quickly fell out of love withthem.
Oh why?
Why?
Because he wants He hit thedesk.
It's just weird.
I just didn't want to, turns outI didn't want to cycle while I
was sitting down and working.
Oh.
Which I think is prettyreasonable.
Who knew?
(00:29):
Who knew?
Um, I don't have anything ashalf as fancy.
I'm lucky if my laptop turns on.
I don't own anything else, soyeah.
Hi Simon! Hi Vicky, how youdoing?
I'm good, how are you?
I'm good, yeah, very well,thanks.
Yeah, yeah, busy, busy.
Glad to be here.
back into the swing of the newyear.
(00:51):
That's true, you enter thispodcast married, which is very
exciting.
I know, the first podcast is amarried one.
Ah, you got the jewels.
Yeah, she put a ring on it.
You really did.
Good.
I'm amazed at what a difference,this is a sort of unrelated,
well it's related to me beingmarried.
I'm amazed at what a differencebeing married has made to my
(01:12):
general sort of mental wellbeing, because I historically
have really bad abandonmentanxiety.
And I assume that, like, anyonewho likes me, soon they're going
to realise I'm a dickhead andjust go.
But now, I've put quite aserious administrative obstacle
in the way.
You've really put that hurdleup.
I just don't think it's worthher leaving.
(01:38):
I'm just way more relaxed.
It's great.
That's great.
That's great.
And also marriages should talkabout that more.
You never get that as a pro ofmarriage.
You get the day, you get thedress, you get the food, get the
gifts.
You never get, you've clawedthem in now.
You've got your claws in now,you're not going to go any
further.
(01:59):
Very interesting.
Oh, good.
Well, I'm pleased you're feelingsecure in yourself.
That's always nice.
Oh, thanks very much.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Anyway, enough about me.
I've been just talking about thewedding non stop for the last
two weeks.
You need to milk it.
Yeah, well, I feel like I'vebecome the dullest man in
history.
(02:20):
You've got a story for us today.
I do.
And it's a French story.
So I apologize in advance for mylack of pronunciation.
But it's a very cool story andwe'd be silly not to talk about
it.
So here we go.
Have you ever been faced with amoment in life where absolutely
everything you've worked for isteetering on the brink of
(02:43):
collapse?
A moment where the weight of theworld is pressing heavy on your
shoulders, leaving you nowhereto turn?
Imagine this, it's 1814, Europeis in turmoil with Napoleon and
your business, your latehusband's legacy, is facing
imminent bankruptcy.
You've lost your husband, yourinheritance, and your reputation
(03:04):
is on the line.
To top it all off, your businesspartner has abandoned ship.
The walls are closing in.
What do you do?
For Barb Nicole Ponsardin, thiswasn't a hypothetical scenario,
it was her reality.
But instead of succumbing todespair, she made a daring
gamble.
A move so audacious it would notonly save her business, but
(03:27):
would revolutionise an entireindustry and cement her place in
history.
This is the story of the womanbehind Woe Cliquot, a woman who
turned darkness into dazzlingsuccess.
The Champagne Lady.
She's the Champagne Lady.
Villa Vos Cliquot, excellent.
You know, you know.
So, our sources today are a BBCarticle, which is how I found
(03:49):
out about, Ponsardin, called theLittle Known History of
Champagne.
There's also a Badass Womenarticle, which is a great blog.
Recommend you go and check thatout.
The Guardian did an article onthis back in 2014.
Smithsonian Magazine, um, theydid an article on this called
The Widow Who Created theChampagne Industry.
And I'm also leaning on aBritannica article about the
(04:11):
Napoleonic Code and conflict atthat time.
this is Barb Nicole.
Ponsardin, it's reallyimportant, her surname, we'll
come on to that in a minute.
she was born 1777.
So this is Les Mis territory,right?
This is where we're in, okay?
it's probably important to note,she comes from Wealth, her
father, was an affluent textileindustrialist in a town called
(04:33):
Rims, R E I M S.
I can't roll my R's either.
This is a small town in France,but it's one that's quite
entrepreneurial.
It's got like a few businessleaders in there.
so she's born in the years thatrun up to the French revolution,
which began in 1789 and lasteduntil 1794.
Barb Nicole.
(04:53):
her Childhood was heavilyinfluenced by the political
leanings of her father, who wascalled, Jean Nicholas Felipe
Ardin.
And so he switched from aroyalist to a Jacobin, and this
is basically a club, it's aninfluential political club, of
the French Revolution, and itwas named after the place, where
(05:15):
they met, so the club was calledJacobin, and it was kind of like
this underbelly subculture.
of revolution.
So it's, she must have heardabout this at the dining table.
So he went from being reallyloyal to his country, his king.
And then over time throughouther childhood, she heard that
narrative change.
So it's very, interesting.
(05:36):
Also, her dad, was clearly,attuned to this kind of thing
because her family, BarbNicole's family, was able to
escape the revolution relativelyunscathed.
So that was quite rare for, thattime, especially people of
affluent positions becausethey're so close to the
monarchy, right?
Yeah.
Um, and then, um, this bit inthe article made me laugh, next
(06:00):
door to her growing up.
When they say next door, this isbasically the next chateau
along.
I don't think it's like nextdoor, like me and you next door.
Yeah, the nearest living person.
Yeah.
so the next state along was theClicquot family, which had, the
head of the family calledFelipe.
So Felipe Clicquot was, also rana successful textile business as
(06:24):
well.
So his, her dad and the nextdoor neighbor were kind of like
local business rivals, right?
So he was like the maincompetitor to, Barb Nicole's
father.
However, you'd think, Romeo andJuliet vibes, right?
You'd think Romeo and Julietvibes.
It's the complete opposite.
So the two patriarchs are like,we could join up and then we
(06:46):
could become like the dominatingforce for this part of France.
Excellent.
So they flipped on his head,which is great.
So it was an arranged marriage,between, Clico and, Ponsardin.
So the, she gets married to theson called Francois.
Um, this was while therevolution was going on, by the
(07:07):
way.
So it was really cute littledetail is that they had a
wedding service, not in abeautiful barn in the heritage
countryside, Simon, but in asecret hiding in a cellar.
That's where they got married.
So it was a secret wedding.
Yeah, it's proper sort ofwartime wedding, isn't it?
Yeah.
(07:30):
It turns out that Francois andBarbie Nicole, they got on and
that was basically going to beher life.
Like with many stories we cover,it was, you know, she could have
had a very easy, comfortablelife and that was that.
this is because under Napoleon,married, or unmarried women were
subject to their husband's orfather's decisions.
(07:52):
Women could not vote, theycouldn't work, they couldn't
make their own money And becauseshe's affluent, she kind of
could have become a Kep woman.
That was her trajectory.
One of the turning points inthat is actually her husband,
Francois, who instead of wantingto take over the textile
business, which his father haddone this collaboration with, he
was more interested in thefamily's side hustle, which was
(08:14):
wine.
So they had a vineyard becausethey're in a French chateau.
And, his Dad didn't really seethe point of the vineyard.
He was like, it's a nice tohave, I'm not getting much money
from it.
But because you had to charterships, so they were shipping out
their textiles, he was like, ifthere's a bit of room on the
(08:35):
ship and I haven't got enoughtextiles, what I'll do is I'll
top it up with wine and then I'mmaking the most of my exports,
right?
I can explore it, make somemoney.
So he was seeing it more as aside hustle.
and just try not to waste moneyon a ship, which I've never
chartered a ship, but I imaginethat's a smart move.
Most people's side hustles arelike they make bracelets or
(08:55):
something.
Yeah, they're making cards inthe evening and they're not
chartering ships.
So Felipe, who is Francois dad,wasn't very happy with, Francois
trying to expand the winebusiness.
He couldn't really see that itwas going to work because the,
(09:15):
Napoleon, wars were going on.
So the Napoleonic wars werehappening.
This is like early 1800s now,where Napoleon was basically
fighting anyone and everyone hecould get his hands on.
It's a really interesting, in myhead, Napoleon is much closer to
the Trump and the musks of theworld today.
You know what I mean?
(09:35):
Just like anyone he couldoffend, he was like, of course,
he's going for it.
Yeah, that's fine.
Um, it's a myth that he wasshort as well.
Is it?
Yeah, he was just like averageheight for people back then.
People back then were naturallyshorter.
What we should do is start thesame rumor about Elon Musk and
(09:56):
then centuries later, peoplewill be like, that Musk, he's
tiny.
Tiny, yeah, he's only 4 foot 2.
Tiny little man.
So Felipe's not on board, butFrancois Plauzon, he learns the
wine trade as much as he can.
And also Barb Nicola, she, hergrandmother actually worked in a
(10:18):
winemaking company for a littlewhile.
So she had a little bit ofknowledge, Barb but not loads.
it turns out that Felipe wascorrect.
So he was like, I told you soson, you shouldn't have started
this wine business.
It didn't go well.
There was, it was troubled, theyweren't making much money.
And then tragically in 1805, sixyears into their marriage,
(10:41):
Francois falls ill suddenly witha fever and then he dies 12 days
later.
He leaves behind Barbara Nicoleand their three year old
daughter.
So how old was Barbara Nicole?
Um, she was 27, I think, whenthey got married.
(11:04):
So now she's a widow, singlemum, young kid, and this failing
wine business.
Yeah, this is the interestingthing.
You, that is the perception,right?
Is that you've been left hungand dry.
You've got this massive debt.
but what happened was things gotreally interesting.
(11:26):
It turns out having a deadhusband, being a widow at that
time was a woman's ticket tofreedom.
So that was the loophole of theNapoleon code was that she
wasn't married as she wasn'tunmarried.
She was widowed which meant allthose things I listed earlier
didn't apply to her anymore aslong as she didn't remarry Wow,
(11:49):
okay.
It was seen as this legalloophole where she was free to
run a business Yeah, she wasfree to work.
She never was free to workbefore she was free to own her
money and spend her money and doeverything all without a man's
permission.
Um, voting was still a no no,but she had this financial
freedom that she's never hadbefore, even though that was
(12:11):
bankruptcy.
Was there like a massive spateof wives poisoning their
husbands in the Napoleonictimes?
there's a really interestingpodcast that I think you'll like
called Lucy Walsall's LadyKillers.
Oh yeah.
It's a BBC podcast.
And she talks about, um,poisoning a lot.
(12:31):
Because it was the easiest thingfor women to do.
So I don't think you're far off.
so Felipe actually does announcethat after his son's death, that
would be the end of the winebusiness, because he wasn't that
on board with the wine businessanyway.
But she convinces her father inlaw, Barbe Nicole, to let her
(12:53):
manage the business.
She convinces him to risk herinheritance, even though it
hasn't gone well at this point.
She's saying, give me somemoney, I'll reinvest it, and
I'll make this work.
And how cool is that?
I suppose it is, yeah.
Because it's failing, becauseshe's a woman, because it's her
father, it's not even herfather, her father in law's
(13:15):
business.
And he's not involved anyway.
And whatever she said must haveworked, she must have been
really convincing, because hesaid, yeah, He was like, all
right, we'll give it a go.
and bear in mind, she's got nobusiness background.
She knows a little bit aboutwine.
She knows what wine is.
She's drank some.
Okay, that's like me opening abookshop.
I've read some books.
Okay, I've got this.
(13:37):
to be fair, Felipe says you canopen the business.
That's fine.
But I want you to learn thetrade.
So what she does, she goes backto school and she does a four
year apprenticeship to learn thetrade of winemaking.
So she spends all her times invineyards, in cellars, learning
to craft the wine.
she's the first woman ever,French woman ever, sorry, to do
(14:00):
that.
to have education,apprenticeship yeah.
So she's learning things likeremoving sediment, adding
ingredients, how to make itclear, how to bottle all that
kind of stuff.
Some of those processes arestill in use today.
So she's got that knowledge,right?
She's there.
In 1810, the business officiallybecomes hers.
(14:21):
It goes back into her name,which is great.
And from the beginning, BarMicole used her widowed status
as a marketing tool.
So she was like, well, I'm goingto spin this on its head and
people are going to want it.
So that's why it's called, theCliquot Ponsardin.
Um, Verve V E U V E meanstranslated.
(14:43):
Oh, wow.
Yeah, uh, Kliko is her marriedname, Bonsardin is her, Maiden
name.
Maiden name.
And, um, she wanted her maidenname on there.
That's my, I never knew that, Ijust assumed Verve.
I was wondering when thecharacter Verve was going to
come into this.
I didn't realize it meant widow.
Yeah.
It's her.
That's awesome.
The reason she chose that isbecause it came, it gave a
(15:05):
certain kind of respectabilityto the beverage.
because the wine was getting abit of a bad reputation, it was
associated with, like today, ifyour brand is associated with
boomers, sometimes that's notgreat.
It was like that, but in the1800s, so it was like Royal
Courts of Old, it wasn't reallyseen as, you know.
(15:27):
Um, it's just a bit sort ofdowdy and uncool.
A bit uncool.
Yeah.
So she wanted to remake that.
Yeah, and it worked.
It gave the bottle and the brandclout and it worked so well.
The other champagne producersgot on board, which is why
Champagne.
You have a lot of verbs.
(15:47):
You have Vernet, veloc, and youhad different ones, and also you
had copycats of her own brand.
Yeah.
Because that's how popular itwas.
Even though these people weren'twidows, they weren't women.
Yeah.
Completely right.
Off brand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, um, you know that bitin Friends where Phoebe thinks
her grandmother is, Miss Nestleor something, because that's
(16:07):
what she's been told.
It's that.
I've got two little side notes.
One is almost entirelyunrelated, but back decades and
decades ago, when Japanesemanufacturing wasn't as trusted
as it is today, like these days,we think of Japanese made goods
as, um, really high quality,reliable Toyota, Sony, all of
(16:30):
that higher end back then theyweren't.
And it was stuff made in theUSA, which was.
considered brilliant.
so Japan renamed a town that hadloads of manufacturing in USA,
spelt USA, so they could putmade in USA.
And also, lots of, I found outquite recently, because Kat's
(16:52):
vegan, and loads of wine is notvegan friendly.
I didn't know this till Cateither.
I had no idea.
It's because a lot of thesetechniques that have been in use
for a couple of hundred yearsfor getting rid of the sediment
and impurities, two things arereally good for doing that.
One is egg white, and you dothat as well if you're making, a
(17:13):
consommé.
Or something where you're sortof making a really intensely
flavoured bisque.
liquid in the kitchen and youwant to get those impurities
out, you'll often put egg whitein and that'll collect them up
and then you can just skim itoff the top.
No way.
That's one thing, and the otheris fish bones, so it's often
filtered through fish bones.
Oh, these are not vegan friendlyoptions.
Really not vegan friendly, no.
(17:34):
Ah, I see.
Because you just think grape,veg, don't you?
You just think grape,vegetarian, you're fine.
There's fruit juice in it.
Yeah, it's grape, isn't it?
Crazy.
Ah, I see.
so this is a known marketingtechnique, isn't it?
It's giving anything to giveyour brand oomph and
credibility.
(17:55):
Yeah.
So, you know, she was a clevercookie and no one told her to do
that.
She did that.
She came up with that herself,which is amazing.
The following February, herfather-in-law invested a further
80,000 francs.
Okay.
Which is about, 350,000 eurostoday, I think I read.
Wow.
So a huge chunk.
Oh yeah.
And she ended up going in intopartnership with someone called,
(18:16):
Alexandre.
Forno, because he had experiencein assemblage, so he was able to
operationalize that a bitbetter.
Okay.
so you could really scale up theproduction for her.
That's it.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm backtrackingslightly, but it's amazing.
So many of these stories we findthat, them being a woman really
(18:38):
hampers their effort to getthings off the ground to give
them the credibility and Ithought winemaking like a really
traditional old French thingjust dominated by men did she
come up against much likeestablishment pushback or you'll
see a bit later on that she'svery good at positioning herself
in the right positions.
(18:59):
So, I think some of it, yes, sheis the brand and the pretty lady
on the bottle, but I think she'svery private.
And she's very good at puttingalmost like a Fort Knox around
her to be able to protect.
So I think that's what protectedit.
she was the puppet master.
You know what I mean?
I think she was pulling thestrings in the background.
(19:20):
So I think that was her strategyto come up against that.
And a lot, like a lot of thestories we have, The sort of
featured woman is almostantagonistic with their, I don't
know if that's the way to phraseit, but like antagonistic with
their femininity.
And it's a, it's a, You won'tlet me do this because I'm a
woman, so I'm going to freakingshow you what I can do.
(19:41):
I love it.
I love that attitude.
Fantastic attitude to have, butshe seems to be playing it
slightly differently.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because she's playing a longterm game.
As well, because what we'redoing at the minute, she's had
one investment from her fatherin law, she's had another 80,
000 francs coming in, but she'sstill going, it's still pushing,
(20:05):
and the reason she's having sucha hard time is because of the
political context we're in.
So Europe was at war, there waslots of naval blockades
hampering trade all the waythrough, because trade was
mainly by sea, not plane.
And also Russia was a hugemarket at that time for,
champagne.
And in the summer of 1812,Russia basically put an embargo
(20:30):
on French bottled wine.
So they were like, put that doordown because of Napoleon's wars
and stuff.
so she's really struggling.
Sales have dropped to 10, 000bottles a year and bankruptcy
again is looming.
On top of everything, this isthe point where her business He
gives up, he leaves thebusiness.
(20:52):
Like I said, it's, I don't thinkit's necessarily anything of our
own doing.
I think it is just the politicalcontext.
I think she's in a luxuryproduct market.
She's in, a time where globaltrade is the only thing that's
going to expand your business.
and she's got left, right andcenter.
No, you can't go there.
No, you can't go there.
Oh, it's really expensive totransport things through land,
(21:13):
but we can't lay your ships inand all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
So it's, 1840 now she's lost herhusband.
Her inheritance is gone becauseshe's risked it all.
She's risked the furtherinvestment.
Her business partner's gone.
You know, she's running out oftime, running out of options.
She's literally got nowhere toturn at this point.
(21:35):
On top of that, she is a woman.
She did have to fight for thischance.
She doesn't have the same rightsas men at that time.
Um, she also.
Need to be chaperoned places aswell.
So there's all these, like, it'snot easy.
She's in a really dark place.
and on top of that, people arejumping on what they call the
brand bandwagon in one of thearticles I read.
(21:58):
So, Jean Remy Moet is herbiggest and most arch rival and
he is on the up and up so thenext, the only logical step
really on the face of it isbankruptcy.
That is the only, I can'texpress how dark, this is.
Because.
Also, she's got to go back toher ex father-in-law and say, I
messed up.
(22:18):
I haven't done that.
I haven't done it.
I know you had vape in me, butI've let you down.
Can you imagine like the, thepersonal turmoil, it's just such
a more you businesses, you know?
Well, yeah.
I think we're coming up to 16years now.
Mm-hmm That the business hasbeen going and there's a lot of.
roller coasters.
(22:39):
And there's a lot of highs, alot of lows in that time.
And some of them on reflection,you realize your own fault or
your ego getting in the way or,things that at the time you
didn't know, you didn't know.
And some of it is just out ofcontrol.
And like even today, politicalBrexit is probably the best
example of how sort of politicallandscape can have such a
massive effect on businessesthat they, You can't even
(23:02):
necessarily plan for that well,and yeah, that's really tough.
And as if she hasn't got enoughto deal with, she's still going
to be chaperoned about the placeand all of that nonsense.
Like all these arbitraryrestrictions.
Yeah, and she's got a daughteron top of all this that she's
trying to bring up at the sametime.
like I said, the next logicalstep would be bankruptcy, but
(23:24):
not for Barbara Nicole.
She takes a gamble.
She is a calculated gamble, butit's a gamble nevertheless.
This is because, again, of thepolitical landscapes.
so we're in 1814, Napoleon'sforces have basically been
broken down.
They did invade Russia in 1812,but, Europe has pretty much
(23:44):
turned against Napoleon.
he's having to retreat back outof Russia.
Napoleon has offered to stepdown in favor of his son.
That offer, which is classic,Oh, it's not me.
I'm it's not the regime.
I'm the problem.
Like I've got someone else whocan step in.
Funnily enough, that offer wasrejected.
(24:05):
So Napoleon, stepped down and hewas sent into exile on a remote
Mediterranean island calledElba.
It didn't really last long.
He was only in exile for like ayear, but that's really not the
point.
And the point is that by Nicole,she was watching.
She was in the background.
She knew what was going tohappen.
She knew your Russia, is herbiggest market.
She knew what the capabilitieswas there.
(24:26):
Her upbringing of her fathertalking around the table,
switching from royalists.
All that kind of stuff that'srubbed off on her and she knows
what to watch out for, whatconversations to look out for.
And she knew at that moment, I'mgoing to save my business.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
And I love it.
She charters a ship.
It's a Dutch ship.
(24:47):
It sails on, the 6th of June,1814, just as the hostilities
were ending.
Remember, wine isn't allowed tobe exported, right, because of
all the trade.
So she smuggles it.
She hides it in, like coffeebarrels, so, yeah, yeah, so
she's disguising it.
she picks the best of her wine,so she picks the best 10, 550
(25:11):
bottles, and she gets the shipas far as Amsterdam, she said
that no other wine can go on theship.
It has to be my best wine.
It has to be this, thischampagne.
It has to be that.
And then she was like, I don'tcare, just get it on the ship
and leave the ship there.
And they were like, what do wedo when we get there?
And she was like, wait, wait forit.
And then as soon as peace wasdeclared, she carried on the
(25:33):
shipment to Russia.
Oh, that's amazing.
And she got it, got to Russia onthe 2nd of August, I think.
And she beat her competitors byweeks.
Oh, yeah.
So Rish has a light.
I want to celebrate.
I want to celebrate now.
Guess what comes in rolling?
Right, so the whole shipmentsold really quickly.
(25:54):
She then dispatched another go.
So she's already two shipmentsahead now of her competitors 12,
780 bottles were given a weeklater and off it went again the
Rish market were loving it.
It was at her feet and shedebuted her champagne in Russia
and Jacques Alexander Iannounced it was the only kind
(26:15):
of champagne he would drink.
What a testimonial.
Fabulous celebrity endorsement.
Can you believe?
And he's on the up and up.
He's just won the war.
He's having a great time.
You're going to do whatever hesays.
So this word of his preferenceand his, you know, like you say,
endorsement spread throughoutthe Russian court.
It was Basically the bestmarketing she could have hoped
(26:39):
for.
That's incredible.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
one of the historians in thearticle says she goes from being
a very minor player to a namethat everyone knows.
Everyone wanted her champagne.
Something similar happened withWedgwood Pottery in the UK, in
England.
A few things happened with him.
One is the, Mr.
Wedgwood came up with ways ofmaking colors and gilding on
(27:00):
there that nobody had donebefore.
But basically he just, he sent avery expensive set to the royal
family.
And they were like, this isbrilliant.
This is the dinner service thatwe want to use.
And then he made a cheaperversion that all of the sort of
middle classes in the hoi polloicould have because of that royal
association.
So that royal endorsement wasthen the foundation of.
(27:22):
of his business, and he justkept churning that model out.
Right, that's so clever, becauseSo, um, uh, Barbie Nicole, she
sees competitors coming in.
So she tries to make hers asspecial as possible.
She puts an anchor on the cork.
She puts the green wax seal thatwe used to see in our champagne
(27:43):
bottle.
She added that as an additionalfeature.
she made that iconic yellowlabel that we see nowadays.
So she does all this stuff andthen she wants to expand.
She's got two problems inexpanding.
Um, one is who does she expandto?
Because the Russian market is abig one.
And also how can she speed upthis process because people are
(28:04):
wanting her wine and champagnetakes forever to make.
What she does is because sheknows cause she got taught in
the apprenticeship.
Champagne is made by addingsugar and live yeast to bottles
of white wine, which is known assecondary fermentation.
And then this creates a sedimentand then you have to remove the
(28:26):
sediment, just like we weresaying with the vegan stuff.
because you want to get rid ofthe dead yeast.
normally what you'd have to doto that is you'd take the bottle
that you're working on of wineand then you'd pour it into
another bottle.
And then the The sediment wouldbe at the bottom.
And she was like, this has takenme ages.
I'm going to flip my kitchentable upside down.
(28:48):
I'm going to drill holes in mykitchen table, and then I'm
going to do all the work upsidedown.
So, What happened then ratherthan the sediment resting at the
bottom of the bottle, it restedat the neck of the bottle, which
meant she could just open it andthen just get the sediment out.
She didn't have to refill toremove the sediment because it
(29:09):
was already upside down.
She created that process.
That process is still in usetoday.
It's called riddling.
You can get a riddling rack andyou can rest your bottles upside
down so the sediment fills tothe bottom and then you don't
have to waste time transferringout.
(29:31):
And that meant that she couldproduce a better quality of
wine, and better qualitychampagne.
and also she could produce itquicker, quicker, quicker than
Moet.
Moet was very annoyed,apparently, publicly annoyed
that he couldn't work out howshe was producing this much
(29:51):
champagne this quickly.
And it'd still be good.
And it still be good.
and obviously she had a largenumber of employees working for
her.
And those employees kept itsecret.
Wow.
How did she do that?
How did she get them to keep itsecret?
That's some real loyalty, man.
This secret was kept fordecades.
(30:11):
We didn't know about Ritalinuntil way down the line.
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
That's amazing.
It's amazing that they kept itsecret and that there wasn't
sort of corporate espionage toMoët sending someone in there in
a fake moustache or something.
But what does that say about herleadership?
And what does that say about heras a businesswoman?
Yeah, you know, she obviouslyknew the value of it.
(30:34):
and just how do you foster thatsort of loyalty?
Right, and the culture, and thisis what I mean about, she must
have positioned people aroundher so well to be able to keep
that secret for so long.
So she has this ability toreally get the trust of people,
to get people on her team, onher side, like she did with her
father in law, to invest in afailing business that she had no
(30:57):
experience in.
She must have such a character,don't you think?
She must have such interpersonalskills to be able to do that.
It's quite exciting.
Yeah.
That's very cool.
Um, so this was it.
This was, uh, Her headstart,literally decades of a
headstart, against hercompetitors.
(31:17):
And it meant that, Barbie Nicolecould fill a absolute champagne
empire, which is very exciting.
Before her death in 1866, shewas exporting her champagne all
over the world.
She managed to get into the U Smarket.
um, because she was that reallysmart and clever, she didn't
just expand geographically.
She did what you were justtalking about, which is
(31:39):
expanding to the upper middleand the middle classes.
So she went for, differentdemographics as well, which
vastly increased her saleswhilst keeping it a luxury
product.
So fun fact, despite creating aglobal empire, she never once in
her lifetime ever left France.
(32:00):
So she's just therepuppeteering.
She's just there doing her ownthing.
The idea is that it was veryunseemly for a woman to do so,
particularly a lone womanwithout, like I said before,
without A husband, a dad orwhatever.
so there was a loophole in thiswidowhood, but not enough of a
loophole for her to do certainthings like travel.
(32:24):
Um, she was known to have be alittle bit of a flirt, which I
think any champagne empire headwould, but she didn't.
never remarried, which isabsolutely crucial because she
didn't want to pass her businesson to some guy.
Of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This all depends on remaining awidow.
Can you imagine building up thismassive champagne empire and
(32:46):
then you marry some geezer andhe gets it?
No, no, no, no.
So in her later years of life,she very much, I think she knew
how shrewd she was, and she knewwhat she, I think she was very
humble about it.
So in one of the letters shewrote to her later grandchild,
(33:07):
she said, quote, the world is ina petrel motion, and we must
invent the things of tomorrow.
One must go before others, bedetermined and exacting, and let
your intelligent direct yourlife.
Act with audacity.
Love that.
That is her parting words to hergrandchild.
How amazing is that?
That's so cool.
(33:28):
And she's, I mean, she must havehad such self confidence and
almost a sort of quietbelligerence about her ability.
I love this.
I'm going to start a winebusiness.
Have you ever made wine before?
Nope.
Do you know how to make wine?
Nope.
Know anything about business?
Nope.
Can you do it?
Yeah, you're damn right I can doit.
(33:49):
I can not only do it, but I canget all the funding for it.
And I can outdo thesecompetitors who've been around
for decades.
Yeah, I'd love that falsinessand that sort of just like
taking control of her destiny.
We've probably had herchampagne, so Well, it's still a
(34:11):
successful business right youcan visit their wine yards you
definitely know their label andthis is 200 years nearly later
That is the story of, BarbNicole Ponsardin.
Yeah, she's awesome.
Love it.
We love her.
Love it.
I've just seen a picture aswell.
Yeah.
She looks cheeky.
I was just about to say shelooks like a flirt.
(34:32):
She looks like a flirt or adrunkard, I'm not sure.
It's so funny.
The cutest thing happened atChristmas.
So, She's like the grandmotherof the family.
she's in early stage ofAlzheimer's, which is really
sad.
And, she forgot who Jamie wasover Christmas.
And when she first met Jamie,she openly said to me, Vicky,
Jamie is a dish.
(34:53):
Like, he's so dishy.
If I was, a decade younger,you'd have to watch out.
And then she'd forgotten, youknow, who Jamie was, but she
said the exact same thing overChristmas dinner.
Did she?
Oh, she's consistent with itthen.
And I was like, you still fancyJamie Hedgen, don't you?
You know, yeah, okay Jenna,okay.
(35:13):
We were talking about Jamie inthe office the other day.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, and just love howbasically anytime that you've
had a A single glass ofClicquot.
The first thing that you mentionis Isn't Jamie just gorgeous?
Oh, don't you just want to eathim up?
Oh, isn't he so handsome?
Oh, I love him.
I know.
(35:34):
I do.
Actually, we all agreed he's ahandsome fella.
He's a dish.
In the words of Janet, he is adish.
He's a handsome fella, and thenSia confirmed that you are
indeed sexy.
Me?
Yeah.
Was it ever in any doubt that isthe question?
Never, no.
You got it going on.
Thank you, thank you.
(35:55):
We're a sexy bunch here at SheShe's History, absolutely,
audio2530181378 (35:58):
well, fabulous champagne story.
Thank you, Vicky.
I enjoyed it.
Thank you.
It was a good one, wasn't it?
It was fun.
Yeah, if you, uh, enjoyed thatepisode, check out the many
others we now have available.
Please like and subscribe,comment, rate us, really helps
if you can rate us on ApplePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Uh, check out our Facebook page,She Changed History.
(36:20):
We have so many calls to action.
Oh, there's, I tell you what,there's a lot, if you're a good
listener, there's a lot for youto be doing.
Yeah, we just need to get theword out there.
But another thing you can do,not for sort of boosting our own
popularity, but just to beuseful, is if you've got any
stories yourself, whether theyare, famous women from history
(36:41):
or women in your life now,However, small or large the
difference, if you feel they'vechanged the world in some way,
we would love to hear aboutthem.
We're gathering, listenersstories for a nice little
episode on some more personal,personal stories to people.
So it'd be great to hear yoursuggestions for new episodes,
hear your personal experiences,get them on the Facebook page.
(37:03):
Yes, please.
Thank you so much for listeningand we'll see you next time.
See you soon.
Yep.
See you soon.
Bye.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!