The women who transformed the champagne industry

We take a look at four of the biggest names in Champagne production – shaped by four different women who transformed the champagne industry.

Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot née Ponsardin, is undoubtedly the most famous widow in France, at least where champagne drinkers are concerned. After all, her marriage status is in the name of the champagne house: Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, veuve meaning widow. Born in 1777 to a wealthy industrialist family in Reims just before the French Revolution, she was married off to the neighbour’s son, Francois Clicquot in order to pool the families’ wealth and influence. But the marriage was in fact not only useful, but a success, and the couple formed a strong partnership, with Barbe-Nicole supporting her husband’s desire to expand the family’s meagre wine production and create a champagne house. The partnership was cut short a mere six years after their wedding, when Francois died suddenly.

Instead of allowing her father-in-law to dismantle the new business, the young went against his wishes, and staked her inheritance on the champagne house. It wasn’t an easy ride, Veuve Clicquot’s enterprise faced near bankruptcy at one stage, until Russian Tsar Alexander I declared that Clicquot’s vintage of 1811 champagne was the only kind he would drink.

Her champagne suddenly became the tipple of choice for the rich and famous. She ran an extremely successful empire until her death in 1866.

Louise Pommery

Louise Pommery (1819 to 1890) took on her husband’s wine business, Pommery in Reims, after she was widowed in 1860. She promptly embarked on mega building projects, ranging from having miners dig caves extending some 18 kilometres, 30 metres underground with a sole 116-step staircase as access. This made her cave system one of the largest in the region. Her Pommery Nature champagne, created in 1874, was a brut champagne that was hugely commercially successful, especially in England, a market she proactively courted.

When Louise died in March 1890, she was the first woman in France to receive a state funeral, thanks to her contributions to the champagne industry. President Emile Loubet issued a decree changing the name of Chigny, her country home near Reims, to Chigny-les-Roses, in honour of her love of roses.

Lily Bollinger

Madame Bollinger famously said about her relationship with champagne: “I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.”

Another widow at the helm of a champagne business, Elisabeth Law de Lauriston-Boubers, known as Lily, was born in 1899 to Baron Olivier Law de Lauriston-Boubers and Berthe de Marsay. In 1923, aged 24 years old, she married Jacques Bollinger, general manager of Bollinger Champagne and grandson of founder Jacques Joseph Bollinger.

When her husband died in 1941, Lily became head of the Bollinger empire, and remained there for the next 30 years. It was she who created the famous first vintage of the legendary Cuvée de Prestige Bollinger RD (Récemment Dégorgé/recently disgorged), which became a Grand Cuvée, and which also made it onto the silver screen as the champagne of choice of the discerning James Bond.

Matilde Émilie Laurent-Perrier

The original Laurent-Perrier champagne house was founded in 1812, founded by champagne negociant (wine buyer/seller) André Michel Pierlot. His son inherited the company and bequeathed it to his cellar master, Eugene Laurent. On his death in 1887, his widow, Mathilde Emilie Perrier took over the Laurent Perrier. She ran the business successfully throughout World War I, and on her death in 1925, her daughter Eugenie Hortense Laurent took over. In 1939 the house was sold to another woman: Marie-Louise de Nonancourt, a member of the Lanson family, and no stranger to the champagne business.

By Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey