14. Barbe Nicole Ponsardin: How to build a Champagne Empire

The Champagne Lady: How Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Revolutionized an Industry

Got a story? Email shechangedhistory@gmail.com

In this episode, Vicky and Simon dive into the remarkable story of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, also known as the 'Champagne Lady.' Amid personal loss and political turmoil in the early 1800s, Barbe-Nicole took over her late husband’s failing wine business and transformed it into a global champagne empire. From leveraging her widow status for marketing to pioneering innovative wine-making techniques, her journey is a testament to audacity and resilience. The episode explores her strategic moves, the challenges she faced, and her lasting legacy in the champagne industry. Additionally, the hosts share personal anecdotes and encourage listeners to contribute their own stories of inspiring women.

Sources today are:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230301-the-little-known-history-of-champagne

https://www.badasswomen.de/barbe-nicole-clicquot-ponsardin/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/31/madame-clicquot-france-woman-champagne

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-widow-who-created-the-champagne-industry-180947570/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code

00:00 Introduction and Check in
00:51 New Beginnings: Marriage and Mental Well-being
02:23 A French Tale: The Story of Barb Nicole Ponsardin
03:13 The Widow's Gamble: Saving the Business
13:42 Learning the Trade: From Apprentice to Business Owner
19:24 Struggles in a Male-Dominated Industry
20:40 Facing Bankruptcy and Personal Turmoil
23:26 A Calculated Gamble: Smuggling Champagne
27:26 Innovations and Market Expansion
31:09 Legacy and Leadership
34:37 Personal Anecdotes and Closing Remarks

Transcript

video1530181378: 0:08

yeah a while ago I had one of those you get uh little pedals to go under the desk to cycle. Oh I haven't seen that. That's a good idea. I quickly fell out of love with them. Oh why? Why? Because he wants He hit the desk. It's just weird. I just didn't want to, turns out I didn't want to cycle while I was sitting down and working. Oh. Which I think is pretty reasonable. Who knew? Who knew? Um, I don't have anything as half as fancy. I'm lucky if my laptop turns on. I don't own anything else, so yeah. Hi Simon! Hi Vicky, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? I'm good, yeah, very well, thanks. Yeah, yeah, busy, busy. Glad to be here. back into the swing of the new year. That's true, you enter this podcast married, which is very exciting. I know, the first podcast is a married one. Ah, you got the jewels. Yeah, she put a ring on it. You really did. Good. I'm amazed at what a difference, this is a sort of unrelated, well it's related to me being married. I'm amazed at what a difference being married has made to my general sort of mental well being, because I historically have really bad abandonment anxiety. And I assume that, like, anyone who likes me, soon they're going to realise I'm a dickhead and just go. But now, I've put quite a serious administrative obstacle in the way. You've really put that hurdle up. I just don't think it's worth her leaving. I'm just way more relaxed. It's great. That's great. That's great. And also marriages should talk about that more. You never get that as a pro of marriage. You get the day, you get the dress, you get the food, get the gifts. You never get, you've clawed them in now. You've got your claws in now, you're not going to go any further. Very interesting. Oh, good. Well, I'm pleased you're feeling secure in yourself. That's always nice. Oh, thanks very much. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Anyway, enough about me. I've been just talking about the wedding non stop for the last two weeks. You need to milk it. Yeah, well, I feel like I've become the dullest man in history. You've got a story for us today. I do. And it's a French story. So I apologize in advance for my lack of pronunciation. But it's a very cool story and we'd be silly not to talk about it. So here we go. Have you ever been faced with a moment in life where absolutely everything you've worked for is teetering on the brink of collapse? A moment where the weight of the world is pressing heavy on your shoulders, leaving you nowhere to turn? Imagine this, it's 1814, Europe is in turmoil with Napoleon and your business, your late husband's legacy, is facing imminent bankruptcy. You've lost your husband, your inheritance, and your reputation is on the line. To top it all off, your business partner has abandoned ship. The walls are closing in. What do you do? For Barb Nicole Ponsardin, this wasn't a hypothetical scenario, it was her reality. But instead of succumbing to despair, she made a daring gamble. A move so audacious it would not only save her business, but would revolutionise an entire industry and cement her place in history. This is the story of the woman behind Woe Cliquot, a woman who turned darkness into dazzling success. The Champagne Lady. She's the Champagne Lady. Villa Vos Cliquot, excellent. You know, you know.

3:45

So, our sources today are a BBC article, which is how I found out about, Ponsardin, called the Little Known History of Champagne. There's also a Badass Women article, which is a great blog. Recommend you go and check that out. The Guardian did an article on this back in 2014. Smithsonian Magazine, um, they did an article on this called The Widow Who Created the Champagne Industry. And I'm also leaning on a Britannica article about the Napoleonic Code and conflict at that time.

video1530181378: 4:14

this is Barb Nicole. Ponsardin, it's really important, her surname, we'll come on to that in a minute. she was born 1777. So this is Les Mis territory, right? This is where we're in, okay? it's probably important to note, she comes from Wealth, her father, was an affluent textile industrialist in a town called Rims, R E I M S. I can't roll my R's either. This is a small town in France, but it's one that's quite entrepreneurial. It's got like a few business leaders in there. so she's born in the years that run up to the French revolution, which began in 1789 and lasted until 1794. Barb Nicole. her Childhood was heavily influenced by the political leanings of her father, who was called, Jean Nicholas Felipe Ardin. And so he switched from a royalist to a Jacobin, and this is basically a club, it's an influential political club, of the French Revolution, and it was named after the place, where they met, so the club was called Jacobin, and it was kind of like this underbelly subculture. of revolution. So it's, she must have heard about this at the dining table. So he went from being really loyal to his country, his king. And then over time throughout her childhood, she heard that narrative change. So it's very, interesting. Also, her dad, was clearly, attuned to this kind of thing because her family, Barb Nicole's family, was able to escape the revolution relatively unscathed. So that was quite rare for, that time, especially people of affluent positions because they're so close to the monarchy, right? Yeah. Um, and then, um, this bit in the article made me laugh, next door to her growing up. When they say next door, this is basically the next chateau along. I don't think it's like next door, like me and you next door. Yeah, the nearest living person. Yeah. so the next state along was the Clicquot family, which had, the head of the family called Felipe. So Felipe Clicquot was, also ran a successful textile business as well. So his, her dad and the next door neighbor were kind of like local business rivals, right? So he was like the main competitor to, Barb Nicole's father. However, you'd think, Romeo and Juliet vibes, right? You'd think Romeo and Juliet vibes. It's the complete opposite. So the two patriarchs are like, we could join up and then we could become like the dominating force for this part of France. Excellent. So they flipped on his head, which is great. So it was an arranged marriage, between, Clico and, Ponsardin. So the, she gets married to the son called Francois. Um, this was while the revolution was going on, by the way. So it was really cute little detail is that they had a wedding service, not in a beautiful barn in the heritage countryside, Simon, but in a secret hiding in a cellar. That's where they got married. So it was a secret wedding. Yeah, it's proper sort of wartime wedding, isn't it? Yeah. It turns out that Francois and Barbie Nicole, they got on and that was basically going to be her life. Like with many stories we cover, it was, you know, she could have had a very easy, comfortable life and that was that. this is because under Napoleon, married, or unmarried women were subject to their husband's or father's decisions. Women could not vote, they couldn't work, they couldn't make their own money And because she's affluent, she kind of could have become a Kep woman. That was her trajectory. One of the turning points in that is actually her husband, Francois, who instead of wanting to take over the textile business, which his father had done this collaboration with, he was more interested in the family's side hustle, which was wine. So they had a vineyard because they're in a French chateau. And, his Dad didn't really see the point of the vineyard. He was like, it's a nice to have, I'm not getting much money from it. But because you had to charter ships, so they were shipping out their textiles, he was like, if there's a bit of room on the ship and I haven't got enough textiles, what I'll do is I'll top it up with wine and then I'm making the most of my exports, right? I can explore it, make some money. So he was seeing it more as a side hustle. and just try not to waste money on a ship, which I've never chartered a ship, but I imagine that's a smart move. Most people's side hustles are like they make bracelets or something. Yeah, they're making cards in the evening and they're not chartering ships. So Felipe, who is Francois dad, wasn't very happy with, Francois trying to expand the wine business. He couldn't really see that it was going to work because the, Napoleon, wars were going on. So the Napoleonic wars were happening. This is like early 1800s now, where Napoleon was basically fighting anyone and everyone he could get his hands on. It's a really interesting, in my head, Napoleon is much closer to the Trump and the musks of the world today. You know what I mean? Just like anyone he could offend, he was like, of course, he's going for it. Yeah, that's fine. Um, it's a myth that he was short as well. Is it? Yeah, he was just like average height for people back then. People back then were naturally shorter. What we should do is start the same rumor about Elon Musk and then centuries later, people will be like, that Musk, he's tiny. Tiny, yeah, he's only 4 foot 2. Tiny little man. So Felipe's not on board, but Francois Plauzon, he learns the wine trade as much as he can. And also Barb Nicola, she, her grandmother actually worked in a winemaking company for a little while. So she had a little bit of knowledge, Barb but not loads. it turns out that Felipe was correct. So he was like, I told you so son, you shouldn't have started this wine business. It didn't go well. There was, it was troubled, they weren't making much money. And then tragically in 1805, six years into their marriage, Francois falls ill suddenly with a fever and then he dies 12 days later. He leaves behind Barbara Nicole and their three year old daughter. So how old was Barbara Nicole? Um, she was 27, I think, when they got married. So now she's a widow, single mum, young kid, and this failing wine business. Yeah, this is the interesting thing. You, that is the perception, right? Is that you've been left hung and dry. You've got this massive debt. but what happened was things got really interesting. It turns out having a dead husband, being a widow at that time was a woman's ticket to freedom. So that was the loophole of the Napoleon code was that she wasn't married as she wasn't unmarried. She was widowed which meant all those things I listed earlier didn't apply to her anymore as long as she didn't remarry Wow, okay. It was seen as this legal loophole where she was free to run a business Yeah, she was free to work. She never was free to work before she was free to own her money and spend her money and do everything all without a man's permission. Um, voting was still a no no, but she had this financial freedom that she's never had before, even though that was bankruptcy. Was there like a massive spate of wives poisoning their husbands in the Napoleonic times? there's a really interesting podcast that I think you'll like called Lucy Walsall's Lady Killers. Oh yeah. It's a BBC podcast. And she talks about, um, poisoning a lot. Because it was the easiest thing for women to do. So I don't think you're far off. so Felipe actually does announce that after his son's death, that would be the end of the wine business, because he wasn't that on board with the wine business anyway. But she convinces her father in law, Barbe Nicole, to let her manage the business. She convinces him to risk her inheritance, even though it hasn't gone well at this point. She's saying, give me some money, I'll reinvest it, and I'll make this work. And how cool is that? I suppose it is, yeah. Because it's failing, because she's a woman, because it's her father, it's not even her father, her father in law's business. And he's not involved anyway. And whatever she said must have worked, she must have been really convincing, because he said, yeah, He was like, all right, we'll give it a go. and bear in mind, she's got no business background. She knows a little bit about wine. She knows what wine is. She's drank some. Okay, that's like me opening a bookshop. I've read some books. Okay, I've got this. to be fair, Felipe says you can open the business. That's fine. But I want you to learn the trade. So what she does, she goes back to school and she does a four year apprenticeship to learn the trade of winemaking. So she spends all her times in vineyards, in cellars, learning to craft the wine. she's the first woman ever, French woman ever, sorry, to do that. to have education, apprenticeship yeah. So she's learning things like removing sediment, adding ingredients, how to make it clear, how to bottle all that kind of stuff. Some of those processes are still in use today. So she's got that knowledge, right? She's there. In 1810, the business officially becomes hers. It goes back into her name, which is great. And from the beginning, Bar Micole used her widowed status as a marketing tool. So she was like, well, I'm going to spin this on its head and people are going to want it. So that's why it's called, the Cliquot Ponsardin. Um, Verve V E U V E means translated. Oh, wow. Yeah, uh, Kliko is her married name, Bonsardin is her, Maiden name. Maiden name. And, um, she wanted her maiden name on there. That's my, I never knew that, I just assumed Verve. I was wondering when the character Verve was going to come into this. I didn't realize it meant widow. Yeah. It's her. That's awesome. The reason she chose that is because it came, it gave a certain kind of respectability to the beverage. because the wine was getting a bit of a bad reputation, it was associated with, like today, if your brand is associated with boomers, sometimes that's not great. It was like that, but in the 1800s, so it was like Royal Courts of Old, it wasn't really seen as, you know. Um, it's just a bit sort of dowdy and uncool. A bit uncool. Yeah. So she wanted to remake that. Yeah, and it worked. It gave the bottle and the brand clout and it worked so well. The other champagne producers got on board, which is why Champagne. You have a lot of verbs. You have Vernet, veloc, and you had different ones, and also you had copycats of her own brand. Yeah. Because that's how popular it was. Even though these people weren't widows, they weren't women. Yeah. Completely right. Off brand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, um, you know that bit in Friends where Phoebe thinks her grandmother is, Miss Nestle or something, because that's what she's been told. It's that. I've got two little side notes. One is almost entirely unrelated, but back decades and decades ago, when Japanese manufacturing wasn't as trusted as it is today, like these days, we think of Japanese made goods as, um, really high quality, reliable Toyota, Sony, all of that higher end back then they weren't. And it was stuff made in the USA, which was. considered brilliant. so Japan renamed a town that had loads of manufacturing in USA, spelt USA, so they could put made in USA. And also, lots of, I found out quite recently, because Kat's vegan, and loads of wine is not vegan friendly. I didn't know this till Cat either. I had no idea. It's because a lot of these techniques that have been in use for a couple of hundred years for getting rid of the sediment and impurities, two things are really good for doing that. One is egg white, and you do that as well if you're making, a consommé. Or something where you're sort of making a really intensely flavoured bisque. liquid in the kitchen and you want to get those impurities out, you'll often put egg white in and that'll collect them up and then you can just skim it off the top. No way. That's one thing, and the other is fish bones, so it's often filtered through fish bones. Oh, these are not vegan friendly options. Really not vegan friendly, no. Ah, I see. Because you just think grape, veg, don't you? You just think grape, vegetarian, you're fine. There's fruit juice in it. Yeah, it's grape, isn't it? Crazy. Ah, I see. so this is a known marketing technique, isn't it? It's giving anything to give your brand oomph and credibility. Yeah. So, you know, she was a clever cookie and no one told her to do that. She did that. She came up with that herself, which is amazing. The following February, her father-in-law invested a further 80,000 francs. Okay. Which is about, 350,000 euros today, I think I read. Wow. So a huge chunk. Oh yeah. And she ended up going in into partnership with someone called, Alexandre. Forno, because he had experience in assemblage, so he was able to operationalize that a bit better. Okay. so you could really scale up the production for her. That's it. Yeah. Sorry, I'm backtracking slightly, but it's amazing. So many of these stories we find that, them being a woman really hampers their effort to get things off the ground to give them the credibility and I thought winemaking like a really traditional old French thing just dominated by men did she come up against much like establishment pushback or you'll see a bit later on that she's very good at positioning herself in the right positions. So, I think some of it, yes, she is the brand and the pretty lady on the bottle, but I think she's very private. And she's very good at putting almost like a Fort Knox around her to be able to protect. So I think that's what protected it. she was the puppet master. You know what I mean? I think she was pulling the strings in the background. So I think that was her strategy to come up against that. And a lot, like a lot of the stories we have, The sort of featured woman is almost antagonistic with their, I don't know if that's the way to phrase it, but like antagonistic with their femininity. And it's a, it's a, You won't let me do this because I'm a woman, so I'm going to freaking show you what I can do. I love it. I love that attitude. Fantastic attitude to have, but she seems to be playing it slightly differently. It's interesting, isn't it? Because she's playing a long term game. As well, because what we're doing at the minute, she's had one investment from her father in law, she's had another 80, 000 francs coming in, but she's still going, it's still pushing, and the reason she's having such a hard time is because of the political context we're in. So Europe was at war, there was lots of naval blockades hampering trade all the way through, because trade was mainly by sea, not plane. And also Russia was a huge market at that time for, champagne. And in the summer of 1812, Russia basically put an embargo on French bottled wine. So they were like, put that door down because of Napoleon's wars and stuff. so she's really struggling. Sales have dropped to 10, 000 bottles a year and bankruptcy again is looming. On top of everything, this is the point where her business He gives up, he leaves the business. Like I said, it's, I don't think it's necessarily anything of our own doing. I think it is just the political context. I think she's in a luxury product market. She's in, a time where global trade is the only thing that's going to expand your business. and she's got left, right and center. No, you can't go there. No, you can't go there. Oh, it's really expensive to transport things through land, but we can't lay your ships in and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it's, 1840 now she's lost her husband. Her inheritance is gone because she's risked it all. She's risked the further investment. Her business partner's gone. You know, she's running out of time, running out of options. She's literally got nowhere to turn at this point. On top of that, she is a woman. She did have to fight for this chance. She doesn't have the same rights as men at that time. Um, she also. Need to be chaperoned places as well. So there's all these, like, it's not easy. She's in a really dark place. and on top of that, people are jumping on what they call the brand bandwagon in one of the articles I read. So, Jean Remy Moet is her biggest and most arch rival and he is on the up and up so the next, the only logical step really on the face of it is bankruptcy. That is the only, I can't express how dark, this is. Because. Also, she's got to go back to her ex father-in-law and say, I messed up. I haven't done that. I haven't done it. I know you had vape in me, but I've let you down. Can you imagine like the, the personal turmoil, it's just such a more you businesses, you know? Well, yeah. I think we're coming up to 16 years now. Mm-hmm That the business has been going and there's a lot of. roller coasters. And there's a lot of highs, a lot of lows in that time. And some of them on reflection, you realize your own fault or your ego getting in the way or, things that at the time you didn't know, you didn't know. And some of it is just out of control. And like even today, political Brexit is probably the best example of how sort of political landscape can have such a massive effect on businesses that they, You can't even necessarily plan for that well, and yeah, that's really tough. And as if she hasn't got enough to deal with, she's still going to be chaperoned about the place and all of that nonsense. Like all these arbitrary restrictions. Yeah, and she's got a daughter on top of all this that she's trying to bring up at the same time. like I said, the next logical step would be bankruptcy, but not for Barbara Nicole. She takes a gamble. She is a calculated gamble, but it's a gamble nevertheless. This is because, again, of the political landscapes. so we're in 1814, Napoleon's forces have basically been broken down. They did invade Russia in 1812, but, Europe has pretty much turned against Napoleon. he's having to retreat back out of Russia. Napoleon has offered to step down in favor of his son. That offer, which is classic, Oh, it's not me. I'm it's not the regime. I'm the problem. Like I've got someone else who can step in. Funnily enough, that offer was rejected. So Napoleon, stepped down and he was sent into exile on a remote Mediterranean island called Elba. It didn't really last long. He was only in exile for like a year, but that's really not the point. And the point is that by Nicole, she was watching. She was in the background. She knew what was going to happen. She knew your Russia, is her biggest market. She knew what the capabilities was there. Her upbringing of her father talking around the table, switching from royalists. All that kind of stuff that's rubbed off on her and she knows what to watch out for, what conversations to look out for. And she knew at that moment, I'm going to save my business. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I love it. She charters a ship. It's a Dutch ship. It sails on, the 6th of June, 1814, just as the hostilities were ending. Remember, wine isn't allowed to be exported, right, because of all the trade. So she smuggles it. She hides it in, like coffee barrels, so, yeah, yeah, so she's disguising it. she picks the best of her wine, so she picks the best 10, 550 bottles, and she gets the ship as far as Amsterdam, she said that no other wine can go on the ship. It has to be my best wine. It has to be this, this champagne. It has to be that. And then she was like, I don't care, just get it on the ship and leave the ship there. And they were like, what do we do when we get there? And she was like, wait, wait for it. And then as soon as peace was declared, she carried on the shipment to Russia. Oh, that's amazing. And she got it, got to Russia on the 2nd of August, I think. And she beat her competitors by weeks. Oh, yeah. So Rish has a light. I want to celebrate. I want to celebrate now. Guess what comes in rolling? Right, so the whole shipment sold really quickly. She then dispatched another go. So she's already two shipments ahead now of her competitors 12, 780 bottles were given a week later and off it went again the Rish market were loving it. It was at her feet and she debuted her champagne in Russia and Jacques Alexander I announced it was the only kind of champagne he would drink. What a testimonial. Fabulous celebrity endorsement. Can you believe? And he's on the up and up. He's just won the war. He's having a great time. You're going to do whatever he says. So this word of his preference and his, you know, like you say, endorsement spread throughout the Russian court. It was Basically the best marketing she could have hoped for. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. one of the historians in the article says she goes from being a very minor player to a name that everyone knows. Everyone wanted her champagne. Something similar happened with Wedgwood Pottery in the UK, in England. A few things happened with him. One is the, Mr. Wedgwood came up with ways of making colors and gilding on there that nobody had done before. But basically he just, he sent a very expensive set to the royal family. And they were like, this is brilliant. This is the dinner service that we want to use. And then he made a cheaper version that all of the sort of middle classes in the hoi polloi could have because of that royal association. So that royal endorsement was then the foundation of. of his business, and he just kept churning that model out. Right, that's so clever, because So, um, uh, Barbie Nicole, she sees competitors coming in. So she tries to make hers as special as possible. She puts an anchor on the cork. She puts the green wax seal that we used to see in our champagne bottle. She added that as an additional feature. she made that iconic yellow label that we see nowadays. So she does all this stuff and then she wants to expand. She's got two problems in expanding. Um, one is who does she expand to? Because the Russian market is a big one. And also how can she speed up this process because people are wanting her wine and champagne takes forever to make. What she does is because she knows cause she got taught in the apprenticeship. Champagne is made by adding sugar and live yeast to bottles of white wine, which is known as secondary fermentation. And then this creates a sediment and then you have to remove the sediment, just like we were saying with the vegan stuff. because you want to get rid of the dead yeast. normally what you'd have to do to that is you'd take the bottle that you're working on of wine and then you'd pour it into another bottle. And then the The sediment would be at the bottom. And she was like, this has taken me ages. I'm going to flip my kitchen table upside down. I'm going to drill holes in my kitchen table, and then I'm going to do all the work upside down. So, What happened then rather than the sediment resting at the bottom of the bottle, it rested at the neck of the bottle, which meant she could just open it and then just get the sediment out. She didn't have to refill to remove the sediment because it was already upside down. She created that process. That process is still in use today. It's called riddling. You can get a riddling rack and you can rest your bottles upside down so the sediment fills to the bottom and then you don't have to waste time transferring out. And that meant that she could produce a better quality of wine, and better quality champagne. and also she could produce it quicker, quicker, quicker than Moet. Moet was very annoyed, apparently, publicly annoyed that he couldn't work out how she was producing this much champagne this quickly. And it'd still be good. And it still be good. and obviously she had a large number of employees working for her. And those employees kept it secret. Wow. How did she do that? How did she get them to keep it secret? That's some real loyalty, man. This secret was kept for decades. We didn't know about Ritalin until way down the line. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That's amazing. It's amazing that they kept it secret and that there wasn't sort of corporate espionage to Moët sending someone in there in a fake moustache or something. But what does that say about her leadership? And what does that say about her as a businesswoman? Yeah, you know, she obviously knew the value of it. and just how do you foster that sort of loyalty? Right, and the culture, and this is what I mean about, she must have positioned people around her so well to be able to keep that secret for so long. So she has this ability to really get the trust of people, to get people on her team, on her side, like she did with her father in law, to invest in a failing business that she had no experience in. She must have such a character, don't you think? She must have such interpersonal skills to be able to do that. It's quite exciting. Yeah. That's very cool. Um, so this was it. This was, uh, Her headstart, literally decades of a headstart, against her competitors. And it meant that, Barbie Nicole could fill a absolute champagne empire, which is very exciting. Before her death in 1866, she was exporting her champagne all over the world. She managed to get into the U S market. um, because she was that really smart and clever, she didn't just expand geographically. She did what you were just talking about, which is expanding to the upper middle and the middle classes. So she went for, different demographics as well, which vastly increased her sales whilst keeping it a luxury product. So fun fact, despite creating a global empire, she never once in her lifetime ever left France. So she's just there puppeteering. She's just there doing her own thing. The idea is that it was very unseemly for a woman to do so, particularly a lone woman without, like I said before, without A husband, a dad or whatever. so there was a loophole in this widowhood, but not enough of a loophole for her to do certain things like travel. Um, she was known to have be a little bit of a flirt, which I think any champagne empire head would, but she didn't. never remarried, which is absolutely crucial because she didn't want to pass her business on to some guy. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. This all depends on remaining a widow. Can you imagine building up this massive champagne empire and then you marry some geezer and he gets it? No, no, no, no. So in her later years of life, she very much, I think she knew how shrewd she was, and she knew what she, I think she was very humble about it. So in one of the letters she wrote to her later grandchild, she said, quote, the world is in a petrel motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligent direct your life. Act with audacity. Love that. That is her parting words to her grandchild. How amazing is that? That's so cool. And she's, I mean, she must have had such self confidence and almost a sort of quiet belligerence about her ability. I love this. I'm going to start a wine business. Have you ever made wine before? Nope. Do you know how to make wine? Nope. Know anything about business? Nope. Can you do it? Yeah, you're damn right I can do it. I can not only do it, but I can get all the funding for it. And I can outdo these competitors who've been around for decades. Yeah, I'd love that falsiness and that sort of just like taking control of her destiny. We've probably had her champagne, so Well, it's still a successful business right you can visit their wine yards you definitely know their label and this is 200 years nearly later That is the story of, Barb Nicole Ponsardin. Yeah, she's awesome. Love it. We love her. Love it. I've just seen a picture as well. Yeah. She looks cheeky. I was just about to say she looks like a flirt. She looks like a flirt or a drunkard, I'm not sure. It's so funny. The cutest thing happened at Christmas. So, She's like the grandmother of the family. she's in early stage of Alzheimer's, which is really sad. And, she forgot who Jamie was over Christmas. And when she first met Jamie, she openly said to me, Vicky, Jamie is a dish. Like, he's so dishy. If I was, a decade younger, you'd have to watch out. And then she'd forgotten, you know, who Jamie was, but she said the exact same thing over Christmas dinner. Did she? Oh, she's consistent with it then. And I was like, you still fancy Jamie Hedgen, don't you? You know, yeah, okay Jenna, okay. We were talking about Jamie in the office the other day. Oh yeah. Yeah, and just love how basically anytime that you've had a A single glass of Clicquot. The first thing that you mention is Isn't Jamie just gorgeous? Oh, don't you just want to eat him up? Oh, isn't he so handsome? Oh, I love him. I know. I do. Actually, we all agreed he's a handsome fella. He's a dish. In the words of Janet, he is a dish. He's a handsome fella, and then Sia confirmed that you are indeed sexy. Me? Yeah. Was it ever in any doubt that is the question? Never, no. You got it going on. Thank you, thank you. We're a sexy bunch here at She She's History, absolutely,

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well, fabulous champagne story. Thank you, Vicky. I enjoyed it. Thank you. It was a good one, wasn't it? It was fun. Yeah, if you, uh, enjoyed that episode, check out the many others we now have available. Please like and subscribe, comment, rate us, really helps if you can rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, check out our Facebook page, She Changed History. We have so many calls to action. Oh, there's, I tell you what, there's a lot, if you're a good listener, there's a lot for you to be doing. Yeah, we just need to get the word out there. But another thing you can do, not for sort of boosting our own popularity, but just to be useful, is if you've got any stories yourself, whether they are, famous women from history or women in your life now, However, small or large the difference, if you feel they've changed the world in some way, we would love to hear about them. We're gathering, listeners stories for a nice little episode on some more personal, personal stories to people. So it'd be great to hear your suggestions for new episodes, hear your personal experiences, get them on the Facebook page. Yes, please. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time. See you soon. Yep. See you soon. Bye. Bye.