Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin

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Portrait of Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot , née Ponsardin (born December 16, 1777 in Reims , † July 29, 1866 in Boursault ), was a businesswoman and the first woman ever to run a champagne house . She was often referred to as the "Grande Dame de Champagne" (the 'Grand Lady of Champagne') and gave her name to the house Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin , which is still known today .

Life

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, born on December 16, 1777 in Reims, was the older daughter of Jeanne Josephe Marie-Clémentine Letertre Huartthe and her husband Ponce Jean Nicolas Philippe Ponsardin (ennobled as Baron Ponsardin since 1813). Her sister Clémentine was later born. The father worked as a successful textile manufacturer and politician, Napoleon and his lover Josephine had already taken lodging in the Ponsardin house. Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin received her education at the Royal Convent of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames in Reims.

In 1798 she married François Clicquot, whose father had founded a small champagne house in 1772. Their only child, Clémentine Clicquot, was born on March 20, 1799. François Clicquot died on October 23, 1805, and with it his widow ("Veuve Clicquot") took over the management of the champagne house at the age of 27, which at that time marketed around 100,000 bottles a year.

As Veuve Clicquot, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin used her pronounced pragmatism, her business instinct and her considerable assertiveness for the flourishing and further development of sparkling wine production. When she died in 1866, she left a company that sold 750,000 bottles a year across Europe.

Companies

Your cellar master Anton von Müller, French Antoine de Muller (1788-1859), a native of Swabia, invented the mechanical shaking process around 1813 , which removed the yeast that had previously clouded the contents of the bottle. Only then did the champagne come into being, which could become a symbol of a luxurious lifestyle.

Much of the success was a very active marketing strategy with travelers all over Europe at the time. While Europe found it difficult to recover from the Napoleonic wars, it managed to export its champagnes all over the world, thereby internationalizing the champagne market. Through her travel agent Louis Bohne, she presented her products at all the ruling courts in Europe and contributed to the spread of French savoir-vivre. For a few decades up to the 1870s, Russia was the company's most important export market. In 1877 the company decided to register the well-known yellow label, which was created for exports to Great Britain and which enables the brand to be easily identified and thus differentiated from forgeries, as a trademark. As part of her entrepreneurial strategy, she acquired around 40 hectares of vineyards in prime locations in Bouzy , Verzy , Verzenay , Avize and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger , in order to guarantee the consistently good quality of the champagne.

In addition to this well-known activity, the widow Clicquot opened the Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin & Cie. Bank on June 1, 1822 . The banking business developed excellently. Numerous companies from Reims built on the new financial institution and thus enabled the expansion policy of the champagne house.

Their influence on the German sparkling wine industry should not be underestimated either. Georg Christian von Kessler worked for Veuve Clicquot from 1807 to 1825/26 (from 1810 as an authorized signatory , later as a partner) and after this engagement founded the first German sparkling wine cellar in Esslingen am Neckar in 1826 . After the death of her close colleague Louis Bohne, Eduard Werle, another German, took over his duties in 1821. In 1830 he became a business partner with an investment of 100,000 francs. He took French citizenship and changed his name to Mathieu-Edouard Werlé. In 1850 he took over the sales division, which was able to sell 400,000 bottles of "Veuve Clicquot" that year.

In 1843 Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin had the Château de Boursault built in Boursault , where she later retired and died in 1866 at the age of 89. She was buried in the Cimetière du Nord in Reims.

Impact history

The Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Awards (BWA) have been presented annually since 1972 .

literature

  • Tilar J. Mazzeo: Veuve Clicquot. The story of a champagne empire and the woman who ruled it . Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-50124-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tilar J Mazzeo: The Widow Clicquot The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It . Harper Perennial, 2010, ISBN 978-0-06-128858-6 , pp. 84 (English, com.au [accessed February 12, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Jancis Robinson: The Oxford Wine Lexicon. Hallwag Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7742-0914-6 , pp. 138, 799.
  3. ↑ Elisabeth Raether: Our heroines in the TIME: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin . In: The time . January 23, 2014, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed February 12, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Elizabeth Kerri Mahon: Scandalous Women: The Story of the Widow Clicquot. In: Scandalous Women. December 31, 2010, accessed February 12, 2019 .
  5. ^ Jacques-Marie Vaslin: Veuve Clicquot: the effervescent widow who gave us the champagne lifestyle . In: The Guardian . October 31, 2014, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 12, 2019]).
  6. ^ How Veuve's Madame Clicquot inspired generations of female entrepreneurship. In: Bay Street Bull. December 10, 2018, accessed February 12, 2019 (American English).
  7. ↑ BUSINESS WOMAN AWARDS. Retrieved February 12, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Clicquot-Ponsardin, Barbe-Nicole
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ponsardin, Barbe-Nicole (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French businesswoman and the first woman ever to run a champagne house
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Reims
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1866
Place of death Boursault