Veuve Clicquot Champagne Does French Style in a Sardine Can!

France is a state of mind as much as it is a country.

Consider the French view of subtle humor. Prior to the French Revolution in 1789, all that was laughable was described by such precise words as esprit (wit), farce (prank) and bouffonnerie (drollery).  

Indeed, it wasn’t until 1932 that L'Académie Française, that august institution directed by the forty members, known as immortels (immortals) who stand guard over the purity of the French language, even gave their official approval to the use of the noun humour within the French language.

But if some things seem to move slowly in the French culture, the result is often a great style that endures (there might be a lesson there). One example of the understated humor (dare we use the word here?) of the French that so delights the rest of us is the newly released Veuve Clicquot sardine can themed packaging.

Mon Dieu!!!Sardine can packaging for the elegant Veuve Clicquot Champagne ?!? Yes, and here is where the depth and character of French humor appears.

For you see, before the Widow (Veuve is French for Widow) Clicquot became the Veuve/Widow Clicquot, her maiden name was Barbe Nicole Ponsardin.

Her family had long laughed at their last name which contained the words for bridge (pon) and sardine (sardin). The family’s coat-of-arms even included a sardine leaping over a bridge! Now that’s French humor.

And when all the facts are told, it was the Veuve Clicquot herself who largely made champagne the legendary drink of celebration. And now finally she is receiving the fame she deserves – but with that touch of subtle French style that makes us all wish we were somehow a little more French: a zip top sardine-can containing one of the world’s great champagne: Viva Veuve Clicquot! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Meet the Mother of Champagne: Madame Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin

It is often said that a great woman stands beside every great man, and that is also true of many of France’s greatest champagne houses.  Leading and legendary among this elite group of revered ladies is Madame Barbe-Nicole Clicquot.

Born into a time of turmoil and change, Madame Clicquot moved through the wake that followed the bloody chaos of the French Revolution with all the grace, courage and insight of a modern business woman.  She was, in short, a marvel and the mother of champagne.

Born Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, she was the daughter of Count Nicholas Ponsardin, a wealthy textile manufacturer, hotel owner and an astute observer of France’s turbulent political scene. Moving with the times, Count Ponsardin survived the French Revolution that cost so many French nobles their lives.

At age 21 Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin married Francois-Marie Clicquot, who was then 24 years old.  Due to ill health, he had only joined his father’s business in Rheims 18 months before becoming a groom.  One year later Francois-Marie and Barbe-Nicole were the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl named Clementine.

To support his new family, Francois-Marie agreed to travel as a sales representative for his father’s company opening new markets for champagne, banking services and wool.  Because his health had been poor since childhood, no one became concerned when six years after his marriage he developed a sudden fever.  Twelve days later he was dead!

Historians believe he died of typhoid, but whatever the cause, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot was now a widow at the young age of 27! Prior to the French Revolution only a few paths were open to a young widow: quickly remarry, join a convent or retire into spinsterhood.

But there was a new spirit of individualism abroad in the land as old class structures were swept away by the Revolution.  Noting that many other red and white wine firms were being run by the widows that the Revolution had created, she fought her father-in-law’s desire to simply close the firm.

Instead, she eliminated every product and service from her new company except champagne.  She chose to invest her own limited inheritance and begin to make culinary history.

Her first problem was the champagne itself.  The bubbles were often uncontrollable and large.  This caused breakage and an inconsistent product.

She solved this process by developing a process called “riddling”. Legend tells the tale that she turned her dining room table on its side and drilled holes through the top so that the corks in her champagne bottles lay at a declining angle towards the floor.

This enabled the sediment that had collected in the bottom of the bottle to be “burped” out the top when opened and then quickly resealed.  As a result, the pressure created by the bubbles was controlled and eventually refined, i.e., making smaller bubbles and more stable wine.

Now the Widow or Veuve Clicquot, as she was known in France, had a unique and valuable product. And she knew it.  She read the political atmosphere like an insightful broker on Wall Street.  She took chances extending credit to those she saw as the future power brokers of Europe as Napoleon’s powers begin to fail.

She cemented the position of champagne in czarist Russia through shrewd marketing and saw to it that her sales representatives taught the young nobles of the court how to saber a French champagne bottle.

Her marketing expertise created such a demand for champagne in England that the elite members of London’s dining clubs would simple order “the widow’s champagne” as they toasted Nelson’s and Wellington’s increasing victories.

Yet she was reported to have wept when her sales representatives wrote her letters describing the destruction that war caused.  She hated the loss of both life and commerce.  Like many of us today, she saw strife and economic disorder as wasteful and harmful and unnecessary.

Yet she always saw the future as well.  Writing late in life to one of her beloved grandchild, she advised that “the world is in perpetual motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligence direct your life. Act with audacity.”

Though she died in 1866 at the venerated age of 89, she left to all of us a lasting heritage of courage and style, all tied to a beautiful bottle of French champagne.  So lift a glass of the world’s finest true champagne (and that does mean a French champagne )and toast this very remarkable woman, the Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, who broke all the rules and made the world a better place one bottle at a time!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011

What Egypt’s Revolution Can Teach Us About the Meaning of Cuisine

The Future of Terroir, and Terroir of the Future

An Essay by Peter Schlagel 

First, let us praise the power of an impassioned people.  Their common yearning for a better life, an authentic meaningful living shared openly with family and friends that fills their hearts and minds and souls with pride and joy, their iron refusal to suffer further abuse or intimidation, their rising up together to transcend fear and hold their ground – these dramatic courageous recent events in Egypt and Tunisia have inspired people all around the world and forever changed these ancient lands. 

Such is the transforming power of a new vision of a life of freedom in each familiar long-suffering locality, the universal human need to be free to work and create and love and live with family, neighbors, colleagues and countryman, one unique neighborhood, city and country at a time.

Such, also, is the transformed “good ground” and terra firma of a new vision of terroir whose roots reach deep into the rich ground of a living community’s unique heart and soul and local cultural legacy extending beyond place and time and environment.

This new philosophy of hospitality and cuisine, this new vision of “La Vie de Terroir”, has a long and noble ancestry.  We owe a great debt of gratitude to the French who first introduced and popularized the term “terroir” as an ingenious marketing innovation to sell French wines by highlighting its origins from unique local vineyards and chateaus.

Others (notably Spain and Portugal) had developed systems of classification based on local origins, but it was the French advocacy of terroir that proved most successful.  It became so popular that their system of "Appellation d' Origine Controlee" (A.O.C.) came to dominate the making of the finest French wines, Champagne and Cognac.

The actual mix of grape varietals was secondary to the wine’s region of origin.  As fine winemaking took root in new regions around the world (such as North and South America, Australia and South Africa), the particular qualities of new wines in new soils gave birth to entirely new styles of wines expressing the local character of their new cultural and physical terroir.

Along with advances in knowledge about successful practices of growing various wine grapes and scientifically informed techniques of winemaking, the concept of terroir expanded to include all the local variations of time and place, of season and soil. But it is only recently that a new vision of a more complex terroir has begun to take wing, an integrated multi-dimensional terroir whose center of gravity is creative culture rather than physical environment.

From this expanded point of view, it is the rich interplay of local cultural values and master artisan traditions with the particular qualities of local soil, season and sensibilities that gives rise to the highest quality of unique local products grounded in historical cultural conceptions of meaning, excellence and depth.

Thus, while we can speak of the highest standards of French haute cuisine and the best pairings of various superior quality wine styles for each traditional course, we can also envision new styles of quality wines and beverages steeped in other great cultural heritages with profoundly different cuisines and standards of value and excellence.

For example, China (“Our Land”) has one of the world’s oldest and most diverse cultural histories reaching back many thousands of years and encompassing a vast and diverse array of different local peoples, languages, traditions and environments.

Yet the central cultural tradition of a shared community-style meal with all dishes served together on a large communal table does not lend itself easily to the foreign European tradition of sequential courses.  This kind of cultural difference can give rise to new creative additions to an already rich tradition of diverse cuisines, a new terroir of the future.

India, similarly, also has one of the world’s longest and richest cultural traditions including thousands of local variations.  The innovative marriage of modern technical knowledge with local cultural legacies and wisdom gleaned from thousands of years of practical experience can be blended and transformed by the creative choices of great chefs to yield new exciting samples of the art of cuisine as shared gifts from surprising new terroir.

This view of terroir honors its esteemed heritage while extending its depth and range to include new creative meaning grounded in the amazing wide diversity of local practice, culture and standards of value that give shared significance to our common human experience. 

Just as the cultural revolution born from the acts of brave Egyptian people has forever changed the familiar ancient lands around the Nile, so can the creative choices of food artisans, from growers to chefs to those sharing fine meals, forever change the honored traditions of our shared cuisine experiences through the new terroir of the future. 

We are grateful to the 80 million people of Egypt for reminding us that the daily art of cuisine and hospitality we all share and enjoy is made possible by a connected cultural terroir grounded in freedom, respect and civility. We thank you for your courage, your example, and for this great gift of a hard lesson relearned and freely given to our common culinary world.

Your Culinary World copyright Peter Schlagel/Ana Kinkaid 2011