If you’ve been drinking champagne for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed how often the word Veuve turns up on the label. Veuve is French for widow. And it’s not a coincidence.

In 19th-century France, women couldn’t own a business or sign a contract. But in a strange legal twist, widows could. So in Champagne, where men died young – fevers, accidents, two world wars – wives kept stepping up to run the houses their husbands left behind. And a lot of them ended up being the best thing that ever happened to those houses!

The Famous Historic Widows of Champagne

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot

Barbe-Nicole was widowed at 27 in 1805. She invented the riddling rack. She also made the first vintage champagne and the first blended rosé. Her house still wears her name: Veuve Clicquot! And it’s the highest selling Champagne in the world.

Jeanne Pommery

Madame Pommery was widowed at 39 in 1858. She thought champagne should be drier than the dessert-sweet style of the day. In 1874 she released the first dry champagne – Brut – and that’s the style the world still drinks now.

Lily Bollinger

Lily (who was actually a Scot who had married a Champenois) was widowed in 1941. Champagne was under Nazi occupation. She held Bollinger together for four years, riding the vineyards on her bicycle every morning. Later, asked by a Daily Mail journalist how often she drank champagne, she said this:

“I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.” How iconic!!

These are the famous historic widows. But what our guests on our recent Fabulous Ladies Paris & Champagne Tour discovered – and what most people don’t – is that the widows of Champagne aren’t just historic. They’re still here! And we visited two of them.

Two more current widows of Champagne

Champagne Veuve Fourny et Fils

On tour first full day in Champagne the group visited Champagne Veuve Fourny et Fils, in the village of Vertus. The ‘widow’ is the wife of Albert Fourny, who stepped up after his death in the 1950s. Her son Roger then took over in the 1970s but he too died young, leaving his wife with two young sons. Madame Fourny continued on alone raising her sons and now they, Charles and Emmanuel, run the house. They make beautiful, precise, mineral-driven Blanc de Blancs from Premier Cru chalk. It’s the two widows in this family story that got the house where it is today.

Champagne Duval-Leroy

Just a few kilometres up the road our group was hosted by Carol Duval-Leroy herself, at Duval-Leroy. She was 35 when her husband died of cancer in 1991, with three boys under nine. She not only kept the house running, she’s taken it to new heights and global success.

She also renamed her prestige cuvée Femme de Champagne. She hired a young woman called Sandrine Logette-Jardin and in 2005 made her the first female Chef de Cave in Champagne. In 2007 Carol became the first woman to head the Association Viticole Champenoise – basically the governing body of the whole region. France gave her the Legion of Honour the following year. Her sons run the house now. She still is part of the operations and was there in person to guide us through her champagnes with Sandrine.

She’s petite. She’s funny. She doesn’t waste a word. Sitting opposite her, our guests understood straight away why these stories keep happening in Champagne – and why so many of the houses these widows took over ended up bigger and better than they were!

A 200-year unbroken line of incredible Champagne widows

That’s two hundred and twenty years of women refusing to let a champagne house close. From Clicquot in 1805 to Carol now, with Madame Fourny somewhere in the middle. It’s one of the great quiet stories in wine.

It’s also one of the things that makes a Champagne Tour with us different. The focus on the women.

It’s also good to remember that none of these women were saving the good bottle for a special occasion. They didn’t have time. They were raising kids, running houses, getting through wars. Champagne was something you opened on a Tuesday because it was Tuesday.

So, that bottle of champagne you’ve been saving? Open it. Lily Bollinger told us in 1961 what champagne is for, and not one of those reasons is a special occasion.