by Sommelier Robin Obert
So, last month we had a bit of background surrounding Francois and Barbe-Nicole who were secretly married in the caves under the city of Reims. Francois was a dreamer. His every intent was to reinvent his family’s business. They too were a textile family. They were also minor wine merchants.
Although very business savvy, Barbe-Nicole was hesitant to follow Francois dream, but as we will see, in the end she finally did. Land wasn’t an issue for the young and newly married couple. Both families gave the couple an incredibly generous amount of land. They were also given quite a sum of money to begin their lives together. At this point in their lives making wine was not even a consideration, Francois simply wanted to grow their sales in wine.
The textile trade was still the main focus. But, Francois had a dream. His goal was to sell wine on the international market which at that time was not a wise move. Most of Europe was at war, temperature shifts and violent conditions destroyed the wine as it crossed over land and sea. Francois agreed with his newly found investors that he would proceed when the warring ceased. So, instead of moving forward with importing his wines he began to intently research wine producers and their wines instead.
Finally in 1801 the war ended, a treaty was signed and Francois felt comfortable fully pursuing his vision to go international with the family business. For Barbe-Nicole this was life altering. Barbe-Nicole found herself alone to care for the children, the existing vineyards and the family business for months at a time. Nobody realized what a shrewd and brilliant business woman she was. They were about to find out soon enough!
Francois became very aggressive in his sales approach, in the past the buyers had to trust the integrity of the sales person. Francois had a brilliant marketing technique. He took a sample of the wine to the potential clients. He began educating his buyers and gaining their trust. Barbe-Nicole had no idea what support she had in the ranks of the working women. As she began reaching out she realized that there were dozens of very influential women in the wine making world. She also discovered that at the time, over 50% of the wine purchased by the giant Moet was produced by women.
Barbe-Nicole was about to understand that these women were not necessarily producing some incredible wines out of passion, rather, a large percentage did so because they were widows! It’s doubtful that she had inkling that one day soon she too would become a member of that club. Such an amazing woman! So little space to tell the story, but, I’ll have more about this fascinating woman next month!
Carrying the Sample Was the Innovation
Bringing the wine to the customer sounds obvious now and was genuinely novel then. A merchant’s word, a broker’s reputation, and a written description were the ordinary basis for a purchase, and a buyer often committed to a shipment without tasting anything at all.
Samples changed the nature of the transaction. They shifted the decision from trust in a person to evidence in a glass, which favored anyone whose wine was better than his connections, and they turned a sales call into an education for the buyer.
The practice also required the wine to travel in small quantities without spoiling, which was not trivial. Bottles were heavy, fragile, and inconsistently sealed, and a sample that arrived flat or oxidized argued against the seller more effectively than no sample at all.
Why Warfare Governed the Wine Trade
Two decades of continental conflict did more than close markets. Blockades and privateers made sea routes dangerous, occupying armies requisitioned stock, customs regimes changed as borders moved, and currencies moved unpredictably enough to erase a profit between the shipment and the payment.
Land routes were slower but not safer. Wine crossing Europe by cart passed through jurisdictions with their own tolls and inspections, and exposure to summer heat or winter cold in an unprotected barrel could ruin a consignment outright.
Waiting for a treaty before expanding was therefore a business calculation rather than caution. The decision to spend the interval researching producers instead of shipping wine was the sort of preparation that pays off precisely once, at the moment conditions change.
Credit was the other casualty. Long-distance trade ran on bills of exchange and on the willingness of merchants to extend payment terms across months, and both depend on confidence that the political situation will hold. When it does not, buyers demand cash and sellers cannot afford to give goods away on promises.
Research was cheap by comparison and could be done from home. Knowing which growers had good sites, which cellars were competently run, and which houses were overextended is the sort of knowledge that becomes valuable the moment trade reopens and everyone else is starting from nothing.
Women Running Wine Businesses
The discovery that a substantial share of the region’s wine came from establishments run by women reflects the legal structure of the period rather than any deliberate opening of the trade. A married woman’s capacity to contract was largely absorbed by her husband, while a widow regained the ability to own property, sign agreements, and direct a business in her own name.
Family firms were also households, so the widow was frequently the only person with both the standing and the knowledge to continue. Continuity mattered enormously in a trade where reputation took a generation to build.
The pattern was common enough that the French word for widow appears in the names of several long-established houses. It records a legal fact, not a marketing decision.
What the Name Means Today
The protection now attached to the region’s name did not exist in this era, when producers elsewhere were free to borrow it. European rules eventually reserved the term for wine made within the delimited region under its own regulations, and the United States handled the question differently.
American law treats a handful of European place names as semi-generic, and a 2006 agreement between the United States and the European Union closed the category to new users while allowing brands that had already used those terms to continue. Where such a name appears on an American label, the true place of origin must appear with it. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau administers those labeling rules.
| Question | European Union | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Who may use the name | Only producers within the delimited region | Region producers, plus brands with grandfathered use |
| Origin on the label | Implied by the name itself | Actual origin must be stated alongside it |
| New entrants | Not permitted outside the region | Closed to new users since the 2006 agreement |
| Production rules | Method, grapes, and yields all regulated | Federal labeling rules; method not dictated by the name |
Champagne Trade FAQ
Why were textiles and wine so often the same family business?
Both were export trades requiring capital, warehousing, and long-distance credit, and the merchant networks overlapped almost entirely. A family with agents in foreign cities could move either commodity through the same relationships.
Did the wine of this period resemble modern sparkling wine?
Only loosely. Pressure varied from bottle to bottle, the wines were generally sweeter, and clarity was poor until later techniques for removing sediment were worked out. The refinement took most of the nineteenth century.
Where does this story continue?
Subsequent installments follow the same family month by month in our hot topics archive, and the sparkling styles they helped establish appear throughout our guide to wine for celebrations.