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Title details for The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J. Mazzeo - Available

The Widow Clicquot

The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Susan Ericksen
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomizes glamour, style, and luxury. But who was this young widow—the Veuve Clicquot—whose champagne sparkled at the courts of France, Britain, and Russia, and how did she rise to celebrity and fortune?


In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life for the first time the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin. A young witness to the dramatic events of the French Revolution and a new widow during the chaotic years of the Napoleonic Wars, Barbe-Nicole defied convention by assuming—after her husband's death—the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world's first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time.


Although the Widow Clicquot is still a legend in her native France, her story has never been told in all its richness—until now. Painstakingly researched and elegantly written, The Widow Clicquot provides a glimpse into the life of a woman who arranged clandestine and perilous champagne deliveries to Russia one day and entertained Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte on another. She was a daring and determined entrepreneur, a bold risk taker, and an audacious and intelligent woman who took control of her own destiny when fate left her on the brink of financial ruin. Her legacy lives on today, not simply through the famous product that still bears her name, but now through Mazzeo's finely crafted book. As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Widow Clicquot is utterly intoxicating.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 20, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400191703
      • File size: 272222 KB
      • Duration: 09:27:07

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Biographer Mazzeo chronicles Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin's unprecedented rise from bourgeois widow to head of one of the most famous champagne houses in France, all amid the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent political turmoil, to say nothing of a business climate unwelcoming to female entrepreneurs. Reader Susan Ericksen's warm, precise voice injects a welcome human note into the narrative, partially compensating for Mazzeo's admitted inability to imagine Clicquot's interior world, because of the lack of surviving personal documents. The widow's story and its historical context are fascinating, if occasionally a bit dry. But Mazzeo's penchant for repeating certain facts and observations becomes particularly irritating in the audio format. A.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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