Was francois clicquot gay

As such, the Clicquot wine soon dominates the market—inviting the ire of her competition.

Wine was a surprisingly perilous industry. She entered into an apprenticeship with the well-known winemaker Alexandre Fourneaux, and for four years tried to make the dying wine business grow. International tensions were high and by 1809 Europe would be on the brink of financial collapse.

Her new technique was an extreme annoyance to her competitors, especially Jean-Rémy Moët, who could not replicate her method. Therefore, Barbe tries to make the same point—maintaining that being François’ widow is true to her identity since she still loves the man and wants to carry forward his legacy.

To make things simpler, Louis steps in and asks for Barbe’s hand in marriage.

By the time she died in 1866, Veuve Clicquot was exporting champagne to the far reaches of the world, from Lapland to the United States. Word of his preference spread throughout the Russian court, which was essentially ground-zero for international marketing.

“She goes from being a very minor player to a name that everyone knows, and everybody wants her champagne,” Mazzeo says.

He understood how very keenly intelligent his daughter-in-law was.”

Keenly intelligent, perhaps, but at that point, Barbe-Nicole had been unsuccessful in selling champagne wine. These risks were only aggravated by the significant distances wine had to travel by ship in order to reach buyers, especially for those like Barbe-Nicole who were looking to distribute internationally.

Rumors swirled around the town that his death had been a suicide caused by despair at the failing business, though other accounts attribute his death to an infectious fever such as typhoid. Up to that point, the Clicquot’s family’s involvement in the wine industry constituted a minor portion of the family business. Louis had set off to gather sales in Germany and Prussia only to find the entire market on the verge of collapse.

But alas, there were no buyers to drink it.