Book Reports

Although I am always reading something, the last week involved two books on wine that I thought might have some interest for those here.

The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J Mazzeo – this is a fairly lengthy an quite interesting account of the life of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, a child of the French Revolution, who survived her husband and fell heir to his new business of Champagne production (the family had previously been involved in textiles). I am sure that finding actual written primary source documents for the life of Barbe-Nicole was most difficult, for although the firm kept all of the old business letters and invoices, almost no personal letters and records were available to the author.

Champagne in the early 19th century was a different drink than it is today – it was far sweeter in the style that the best market the Russian nobility preferred it, and only much later came to be made in a brut style that we’d recognize today. The startup was difficult, spanning the Napoleonic war(s) and there were detours into banking (a disaster) but the firm finally succeeded under one of the few women business owners of the period.

The book seems well researched and has a considerable number of notes to the text, although they are oddly not footnoted but simply set out by chapter at the back of the book. The author includes a section on her research experience as well as some period recipes from the Chateau. Maybe it is my inherent geekiness (a couple of my degrees were in history, although a somewhat earlier period than the French Revolution) but I enjoyed this one a lot. And it also made me wish I'd been around to taste the 1811 wine (Year of the Great Comet).



Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker – this is an exhaustive tale of the author progressing from a wine amateur to passing the exams for her sommelier certificate. She describes in detail her experiences with wine stewards, sommeliers, plain wine nuts and others, her methods of attempting to learn the range of smells and flavours she had to master and her staging at various restaurants, leading up to her taking the exam.

She got to work at some very up market restaurants in New York, attended the New York Le Paulée event (a very expensive piss-up for the rich), met many winery owners, winemakers and wine personalities and her text is leavened with some humour that will be familiar to most aficionados. Recommended if you have ever taken wine tasting seriously.

[David M. Bueker]

Thanks. I did not know about the Cliquot book.

It was interesting that there was a window of opportunity for a widow to head a business at a certain period but that this was less likely later on - no new ladies in charge of Champagne houses until the 1940s. If you like history, David, you'll probably like that book.

Can you think of a worse time to try and start a business involving export than during the Napoleonic war? They tried to get the jump on other producers by sending a large shipment to Holland to be shipped out via the Baltic to Russia as soon as the ban was lifted by the government - except that the British got involved and it was trapped and went bad sitting in storage.

A couple of other interesting things - although no Frenchman will admit it, there is evidence that sparkling wine was 'invented' in England and the story about Dom Perignon and "I am drinking the stars' is a bunch of crapola thought up later by Moet for advertising purposes! And Clicquot figured out the remuage method before her competition and kept it a secret for some years.

If you read it, do let us know what you think.

I want to read the Cliquot book, but I read Cork Dork last year There was a discussion on it on this board

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61337&p=471051&hilit=dork#p471051