Vive les veuves!

Posted by Barbara on January 20, 2025 in Blog, Consumer issues, Dame designate, feminism, Food, History, Women's equality issues | 2 comments

Saturday was wonderful; the family gathered to celebrate grandson no. 2’s birthday.  We all applauded the exquisitely crafted birthday cake, and the champagne flowed to everyone’s satisfaction.  But although I hate to be the harbinger and all that, you need to know that all is not well in the French heartlands of champagne.

As if the gloom of January was not bad enough, as if the incoming US presidency of a convicted felon was not enough bad news, and as if the latest restrictions on women’s activities by the Taliban in Afghanistan were not vile enough, to add insult to injury it seems that people are cutting down on champagne consumption.

Last July, it was reported that French champagne producers ordered a cut in the number of grapes harvested after sales fell more than 15% in the first half of 2024. Full-year shipments were down 9.2% from 2023 at 271.4m bottles, according to the Comité Champagne. Apparently, the French sales market comprised 118.2m bottles last year, down 7.2% compared with 2023, which the champagne trade association puts down to prevailing ‘gloom’ in the country.

It seems that this also goes for the US, which is another major market for champagne; sales have dropped there too, which if we take the barometer seriously, means that not everyone is rejoicing at the prospect of the second Trump presidency. Or do tech bros not drink champagne? I guess they’re too busy having bits of themselves cryogenically frozen, or whatever billionaires do with their money.

We should never forget that the growth of the champagne industry in the early 19^th century was largely due to women.  It was the so-called ‘merry widows’ of champagne who turned bottles of bubbly into a world-famous celebratory sip. Unlike many women of the era, widows were allowed the independence necessary for running a business. Unmarried women were dependent on their fathers or brothers and were not allowed to have a bank account, and married women were forced to rely on their husband’s money and power. Widows, however, were allowed to own property and businesses in their own right, control their own finances and move freely in society.  Jeanne Clicquot, Louise Pommery, Mathilde Emilie Perrier and Apolline Henriot were all women who found themselves in control of the family champagne business on the death of their husbands.  Those businesses that were not always in the best of health when they inherited them they transformed by their ingenuity, creativity and persistence, and they influenced the industry as a whole.

It seems fitting to end this blog with a reminder of happier times, when one of these merry widows, Madame Lily Bollinger, was interviewed by the Daily Mail on October 17, 1961 and said the words that became world famous:

‘I drink my 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 when I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.‘

So there you have it. Let’s hear it for the champagne widows or, to put it another way: vive les veuves!