Secrets of Champagne and Strength

It helps the algorithms and I hope you enjoy listening to this show and pour yourself a glass of champagne . God bless All right folks . Today we have a very special treat . I like to think of it as a cocktail , almost , of a wonderful book .

It is the Champagne Tales by Kate McIntosh , and this is a little bit off the usual genre you hear during crossword , but I thought this would be a great Valentine story , a great Valentine book for any of you guys listening out here , out there looking for a gift for your wife .

And to start this book off , to start this interview off , I'm going to pour myself a little glass of champagne . There we go . Hopefully you can hear that in the background . It's unfortunately it's not Vuv Clicquot . It is because I couldn't find it here in Germany . It is because I couldn't find it here in Germany .

I'd like to welcome the author , kate McIntosh , who has written this wonderful , charming book , the Champagne Letters put out by Simon Schuster . Kate McIntosh , I love her biography . She's always in search of the perfect bottle of wine , a good book and a swoon-worthy period costume drama . I love it .

You'll find her in Vancouver where in her free time , she enjoys spending time with friends , teaching , writing and listening to true crime podcasts . And Kate , welcome to the show . And I have to ask you do you drink champagne ?

You talk about food , you talk about method and you set it against the backdrop of Napoleonic history where Madame Clicquot , the Veuve Clicquot , actually made her champagne . So why don't we start from the very beginning ? Why this kind of book ?

People and myself included , sometimes you also kind of want to sink into a story . So for me , historical fiction has always been that lovely blend of a chance to learn a lot of things at the same time of getting a great story that sort of surrounds it .

So for me , it was a fun way to share all these details , versus pinning you in a corner at a cocktail party and being like did you know the history of champagne ? This lets you do it in perhaps a more socially acceptable way . South , it actually started . I had the chance .

I lived abroad , so I lived in Belgium for a couple of years and during that time , as anyone who's lived in Europe is aware , everything is so gosh darn travelable . Anyone who's lived in Europe is aware everything is so gosh darn travelable .

You know you could go from Brussels to Paris within just a few hours on the Eurotrain , so we had a chance to travel down to Epernay and to France and I just I fell in love with the area and I took a tour of the Veuve Clicquot Champagne House and in that at the time it's actually rather funny because while I was a huge reader , I wasn't a writer at

that time . I wanted to be , but I wasn't yet sort of fully writing my own books .

What people may not know is veuve means widow , and that's a really good place to start , because at that time in France , as well as in many other places in the world , women were not allowed to own their own business . Now , the exception was if she was a widow .

So one of the things that was , of course , happening during Napoleonic France is there were a lot of widows being unfortunately made at that time . So you started to see more women moving into the vineyards and taking over . Just as you see in other times in history , during war , women step up into occupations that they might not otherwise have done .

So World War II had Rosie the Riveter . The Napoleonic War resulted in women moving out into the vineyards and into production and so forth . So , champagne and the widow , she was married . She was married to Francois Quicot . He was a bit of a dreamer , he was a bit of how to describe Francois .

He had a lot of big emotions , by all accounts , and she was probably the more practical of the two in the business pair and then when he passed away she stepped up into that role . Now when we see any pictures of her she's usually pictured the most famous painting . She looks like she's about in her 70s .

She's a bit heavy set woman with these big giant sausage curls . But what of course a lot of people realize is that was taken . Obviously that painting was created towards the end of her life , when she was starting the champagne field . She would have been in her 30s . She was a young mother and she was sort of taking this on .

And I think what appealed to me was a little bit of that timeless quality of people stepping up when things are difficult . I have a wonderful aunt who has since passed away and my Aunt , joan , always used to say to me difficult things aren't done by special people . Special people step up to do difficult things , and that always sort of stuck with me .

You know , whenever I was going through something she would be like you know you're not the first or the last to deal with something difficult , you just have to do it step by step , just do the next right thing . And so I think what appealed to me with the widow is there was a woman who very easily could have stepped back .

There was a lot of societal and family pressure for her to remarry , but she knew what she wanted to do and she had a very clear vision for her , for her wines . She was a huge innovator in the world of champagne .

I can talk , if you like , about some of the changes that she made that significantly improved the product and she took those steps to do what was needed and I found that admirable and I think for other women and for other readers seeing someone tackle that is always an exciting read .

So you have Madame Clicquot , the Vauve Clicquot , later in her life she's at the very end of her life actually and she is a great-grandmother and she's writing to Anna , her granddaughter , or great-granddaughter , great-granddaughter , okay , great-granddaughter , and this is set against modern times a woman named Natalie Taylor , right Recently off a very fresh divorce and

actually when she opens the book she's still sort of going through the divorce and the emotions behind that . Why did you decide to do it like that ? Because I think it's really interesting how you do it . You kind of mirror the two women . She draws strength from Veuve Clicquot , from Madame Clicquot .

So I knew that I wanted to write about Veuve Clicquot and I wanted to tell her story and I knew I wanted to have someone learning from that story .

Now , on the other end of that , I actually went through my own divorce . So at that time we had just planned for my 50th birthday and for our 25th anniversary we had planned a trip to France when , in fact , everything came out and our marriage blew up . So , as a result , I went on our 25th anniversary trip on my own .

So , unlike the character in the book who also runs off to France , I didn't have nearly quite the adventures that she did . I mostly ate my body , weight and cheese and did a little bit of sniveling and crying as I walked around on my own .

But part of what I found through the process of travel and I am a huge proponent of travel as a way that we can learn and grow , both about other worlds and also about ourselves .

So one of the things that happened while I was on this trip to France for myself was , I reminded myself , like I can do this , I can do things on my own , and I , of course , was drinking a lot of champagne while I was in France , and that reminded me again of the widow .

And I think for a lot of people , when you're going through any type of difficulty , we can learn . So , yes , it feels difficult , but we don't have to blaze a brand new trail . There have been people who have bushwhacked through this before and we can learn so much by following in those footsteps or by what we can learn from those people .

So for me , the widow was one of those people that I reminded myself . Her life had impact by what she did after she lost her husband , not before , and so for me , it was that reminder of I can do things . I just need to find my own particular path .

There's a lot of wisdom in these letters and now that I know that your experience I see how you drew from that experience and put these in to the letters and it's not hard to imagine . Because of the times that she was in , because of her conditions , she had to be very strong and you portray her as giving the wisdom of strength and it really works well .

You know , I have a very dear friend who unfortunately lost her son in this past year , and one of the things that she talked about is how many people came to her and said , oh , you're so strong , I don't think that I could get through that . And she said to me like I don't have a choice , like this is the situation that I am faced with .

And when you look at someone like the widow Clicquot , she was dealing with several different things . There was the death of her husband . There was a business that was on the financial brink for a very long time .

She was eventually extraordinarily successful , one of the most successful entrepreneurs probably still , but certainly in the initial days it wasn't smooth sailing . Then you kind of layer in there's the Napoleonic War that's going on at the same time and all of the challenges that were happening with winemaking .

It's difficult to make wine when there are troops moving in and out of the fields where you grow wine , where there are tariffs and challenges that are presented with exporting or importing different products . So she was having to problem solve during all of that and it was a series of decisions and I think what's important is not all of those went well .

She took a big gamble at one point and smuggled a bunch of her wine out into Amsterdam with the idea that they would get it out into the market and just with the timing with the ships , almost all of that exploded on the dock .

So wine bottles at the time were under a lot of pressure , champagne is still under a lot of pressure , glassmaking certainly wasn't as refined as it is now and they had massive explosions and basically the entire shipment was destroyed . But it was almost the end of the Champagne House .

I didn't realize that she was one of the first to come up with rosé champagne too , and she came up with a they call it a millésime . A single vintage , a single grape . This was a woman on the move .

And when you go down into the cellars they're delightful cellars , so they're carved into this limestone that is throughout the region they have this wonderful sort of sweet musky aroma . When you go down it almost makes you hungry .

And you see these racks and racks of wine and they look like sort of Egyptian pyramids , so they're sort of tilted towards the center , all the bottles with the bottom sticking out , and under the traditional champagne method .

You see fellows they're called riddlers who go along and they turn the champagne each bottle a slight amount each day , and by turning that just ever so slightly , it moves the yeast down into the neck of the bottle where it's eventually disgorged . And we just think of that as well . Isn't that so sweet and old-fashioned , of course ?

And now in many places that's done with machines , and any sparkling wine will have that yeast in the bottle because it's the second fermentation that makes the wine bubbly .

But of course , what a lot of people don't know is if you don't get that yeast completely out , you run the risk that the wine can go what they call ropy , and that's a very nice term for what it is . It's about the consistency of sort of a loose egg white . It looks a bit like pond water .

You'll see these long almost like algae-like strings that come up from the bottom of the bottle . It's completely vile , it's completely undrinkable . And this happened a lot in early champagne .

Because before she came up with this process of turning the bottles upside down and doing what they call disgorgement to get it all out , the only way that you could get the yeast out was from pouring from bottle to bottle .

It was a mess and it cost certainly bubbles and it cost product and it was very expensive and it often didn't work . So this was a huge step forward in terms of quality control , in terms of quality control , and she was never satisfied . I mean , this was a woman who was constantly looking at the different blend of grapes that could be done .

She was looking at whether or not you could do a single year vintage . She was looking at how to constantly improve the bottles that were used , the shipping methods that were used , anything to sort of do this . And it was really under her that champagne became this hugely popular drink .

And you would hear in England in the early 1900s people would be yelling out give us the widow , give us a bottle of the widow . And it was because her shame was so ubiquitous and so many people just knew it as this high quality product .

Certainly , now that you know there are many and I of course , tragically had to do an in-depth study of all the different campaigns- Of course you did , Of course you poor thing . It was a difficult thing . It was tax deductible , no less , but I did my part so that you don't have to . Where I tried to multiple art . It was difficult and I was very lucky .

There's a wonderful store here called Everything Wine , where they have a sommelier on staff who teaches various classes and did a class , actually , on different sparkling wines . Champagne is made in the Champagne region of France , but there are multiple sparkling wines , many of which are made in the same methods of Champagne .

They just can't call themselves Champagne and I think a lot of them owe the debt of their gratitude to entrepreneurs and innovators such as the widow .

And I thought , huh , I never , I never really thought of that . And what's interesting ? Now thought , huh , I never really thought of that . And what's interesting ? Now , I just did a tour and there were a lot of women owners , especially of your small house champagnes , lot of women owners .

And one of your characters wants to open up a wine store , a women's owned or in the story evolves but a wine store . And I've seen a couple of those now come through Epernay and through Ron's . So I thought that was really interesting .

In Canada , where I live , you're also seeing the growth of more and more women either taking over businesses so family-run businesses or striking out on their own , and there's just some really exciting things that are happening in wine .

I think one of the things that's so enjoyable about wine is it is you know , if you're going to choose to learn about anything , why not choose to learn about something as much fun as wine ? If you're going to go down a rabbit hole , this is a lovely rabbit hole to be in .

That's great , and if you really do it , I mean yes , of course , and there are people who are wine snobs and are very persnickety about wine , but the truth is that wine is very accessible and people who are really passionate about wine will always tell you it's what you love , it's what you enjoy .

My dad always jokes my dad's in his 80s and he always says his favorite vintage is Tuesday box wine and that's what he likes . Right , it works , it works . And if that's what he likes , that's what he should drink .

And one of the rabbit holes that I went down for the book was the fact that it can be very easy to fool people who get ideas about wine . There's a wonderful nonfiction book called the Billionaire's Vinegar . That is all about wine fraud . So there is a whole element of people who will buy and trade in wine that is actually counterfeit .

And I think that happens because people kind of get set up . You know , you have someone who's swirling a glass and saying things like I get honeysuckle , I get this , and someone else I smell grape juice . I don't understand what I'm missing .

It smells like wine , and so they feel intimidated , and so it can be very easy for people to be convinced that something is something that it isn't , and so that for me was another very interesting and fun sort of research rabbit hole to go down , and the character in the present day learns a lot about sort of wine fraud and what can happen in those areas and

how easy it is to be convinced something is something that it is not .

I just , even when times are bad , of just that faith in the future , of just plowing forward and wherever she's being challenged , I think persistent would be the word right .

something or when they triumphed over something , and we forget the series of failures that led to that triumph .

But we forget that there were all these series of things where things did not go well , and I think what I enjoy and admired in the Widow , as well as what I've enjoyed in other historical figures that I've looked to over the times , is there are people who fail but then get back up .

Certainly one of the classic stories that comes up every so often is when they talk about Abraham Lincoln and the amount .

I knew you were going to say Abraham Lincoln , yeah yeah , yeah , he's impossible not to think of you know where it was like , and then that didn't go well , and then he lost that election , and then that didn't go well , and realizing , of course , that what made him Abraham Lincoln wasn't what he accomplished , that what made him Abraham Lincoln wasn't what he

accomplished , it is that he kept getting up to accomplish those things . And you know , if there was something that I could impart to other people , or certainly something that I wanted to come through in the book , is that you will get knocked down , and I think sometimes we think we're special .

I know , you know , for example , when my divorce happened , I was sort of gobsmacked , of like but this shouldn't have happened to me , like it's not that I didn't know , other people got it , I just didn't think it would happen to me .

And coming to realize , like well , there's nothing special about me , there was nothing special about the widow , there's nothing special about anyone who has to face a difficult time . The challenge is will you get back up when life knocks you down ? Not whether or not life will knock you down , it almost certainly will .

The question is are you going to get back up ? And the present day character , that is the lesson that she is taking from the widow and certainly , I believe , at the end of the book .

What you see is someone who has learned to have confidence in herself , not that she will do everything right because she won't , not that she won't make mistakes because she will , but that , when she makes mistakes , that she will be competent and capable to face the outcome of those . And .

And I have read historical fiction and I also read a large amount of historical nonfiction or narrative nonfiction , and I was terrified and I decided to do basically what the widow would say , which is like just give it a start . And so I actually started .

There's an absolutely remarkable biography called the Widow Clicquot by Tilly Armazio , which is an excellent book . That is the biography of the Widow Clicquot . So I started with that . If you see my copy , you'll see there's a million different post-it notes and various things sticking out of that book and I started with very simple things .

So I just created a timeline of her life . I used to work as a therapist . So I worked for over 20 years as a therapist and one of the things you learn as a therapist is it's not what happens to you in your life , it's the story that you tell yourself about what happens .

So I first started with what are the major events that we know happened in her life that are part of sort of her biographical record . And then I started to think what is the story that I believe she told herself about , what those events meant ?

I was very lucky in that I wrote a letter off to the Champagne House and indicated that I wanted to write this book , and while they would have been very appropriate to just say , well , that's lovely for you , good luck , right , appropriate to just say , well , that's lovely for you , good luck .

Someone who reached out to me from there , a woman named Isabel , who's in charge of sort of their heritage foundation , and she was an endless source of a point person , so I would call her up and ask her questions for things that I couldn't find . And then we live in such a remarkable time .

I'm old enough that I remember card catalogs and I remember chasing through the stacks of libraries to find information out . And now we live in this remarkable time where you can just literally start , you know , while still in your pajamas , sitting on the sofa , and stick something into your Google search bar and start the process and figuring out .

I'm always amazed at what people are willing to share , and I'm sure you find this in your podcast because you have this opportunity to talk to all these fascinating people , but one of you know the rabbit holes that I went down at one point is I was writing a scene and I was like you know , she strode down the vineyard and then slipped the envelope into her

pocket and then I stopped with my finger over the keyboard and I'm like would she have a pocket ? Were there pockets ? I don't even think that's a great detail . I have no idea . If there are pockets , is it only women in present day who are like behold , it has pockets ?

So I , you know , I ended up reaching out to the local university and there was a person who taught a class in clothing through the 17 and 1800s . And I reached out and this person was endlessly passionate to be like I'm so excited to tell you about the role of pockets and underwear and buttons and how things work .

And for me , the challenge in historical fiction was deciding what details to leave in versus going down the rabbit hole .

So one example that I can give because I couldn't not leave it in the book and I had to kind of work around it is one of the details I came across was , of course , during the Napoleonic War , they had conscription , or basically a draft where they were bringing people in who had to fight in the service and probably much like any other time .

Initially there's a huge outpouring of patriotism and you see a lot of people sort of signing up , and as a war slogs on and the realities of war start to really come in , you see a lot of people being like you know , I think I'd rather not go and do that , I'd rather stay here and take care of my home and my family .

And so one of the primary ways that people opted out of being conscripted is that they would knock out their front teeth , because at the time , in order to load a weapon , you had to tear the paper cartridge with your teeth and then you would pour the powder into the gun and then that would prime the gun and they would .

So you would see all these people who suddenly didn't have front teeth because it became a way to get out of the service . Wow , I stuck that . There's a line in the book where that she's walking along and she talks about some of the people in her village that are missing teeth and who are claiming oh they're .

You know , I slipped and I fell and I unfortunately lost my teeth , but it was a well-known draft dodging sort of way to get around that .

And who is the psychic that Josephine Bonaparte goes to , and they share the psychic . But you also keep your Catholicism and I love that healthy dose of you . Don't dismiss the Catholicism in the Widow's Life and because it was a historical fact for her and at that time it would be weird if it was not .

And I wonder if you know someone's writing historical fiction about 2025 and the year 2095 , and they'll be talking about baristas and someone will be on whatever the equivalent is a podcast saying like , oh , it was so neat , they had these little baristas . Yeah , that's true . Probably it didn't exist . But you know , the widow has all these people in her life .

She has Louis Ball , who is the salesperson , who was a true person that was in her life and was very involved with her as sort of a .

They weren't partners in business , she was his supervisor , she ran the business , but he was certainly someone that she turned to quite often and was very involved with and very much respected his opinion , turned to quite often and was very involved with and very much respected his opinion .

The psychic , as you mentioned , is a real character and , just like today , I think there's often this blend with what we say and then what our interests are .

So we may say that we're a total skeptic , but we still toss the salt over our shoulder , and certainly it seemed to me very reasonable that the widow , who was Catholic , who , by all accounts actually got married in secret , because she got married during the French Revolution , when religion was pretty much verboten .

They got married in secret , actually in the cellars beneath the city , so that they could have a Catholic ceremony . I still believe that she would be willing to pray for a good outcome , but also open to finding out whether or not a psychic had any inside information that might also be helpful .

And book clubs are a great way where suddenly someone else in the book club it's their turn to recommend a book and you have a chance to discuss something that you might not otherwise have picked up . And this book has , you know , knock wood , been very popular so far with book clubs , and I think that is for two reasons . One , it gives you a great theme .

If you want to throw a party and have some French food and some French wines and some French champagne , why not do it while discussing a book about France and champagne ?

Sure , of course , the things that go with it , and I do think there are a lot of things that are resonating probably particularly with women , but with readers in general around starting over and finding strengths at different times , and these are both characters in some ways , that are women of a quote-unquote certain age , and I think there's sort of a resurgence

for people wanting to have discussions about that . Now I have , if people are interested , if they reach out on my email , I do have a list of book club or book discussion questions that can be a jumping off point if people like that , and I also did make a list of champagne cocktail recipes , including the history . So I did put the history of .

You know where the mimosa comes from , where the French 75 comes from , oh yes , which is lovely because there's some fun little . The French 75 actually comes from the French 75 Horwitzer , which was a gun during World War I because it packed quite a wallop , as does the cocktail , if you're so in love .

great , kate . I thank you so much for taking time , I know , out of probably a very busy schedule . I cannot recommend this book enough . It would be , gentlemen , if you're listening to this , it would be a great gift for the ladies in your life for Valentine's Day and also , I actually think men would enjoy reading it , because it does it is about history .