What my friend Barbe taught me

The old­er I get, the less patience I have for the world telling me who I am sup­posed to or allowed to be. 

And the more I am pulled toward oth­er women that occu­py pow­er in a sys­tem that assumes they deserve none. So, every year, on my August birth­day, I treat myself to a bot­tle of Veuve Clicquot cham­pagne and toast a badass named Barbe.

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin mar­ried Francois Clicquot in 1798, when she was in her ear­ly twen­ties and liv­ing in Reims, the cen­ter of the Champagne trade. She grew up in a pros­per­ous fam­i­ly dur­ing the upheaval of the French Revolution, which meant she knew famil­ial priv­i­lege but soci­etal instability. 

After mar­ry­ing Francois, she became con­nect­ed to a fam­i­ly already exper­i­ment­ing with cham­pagne pro­duc­tion, though the house was quite small and still far from the glob­al icon it would lat­er become. Francois died of typhoid fever in 1805, leav­ing Barbe-Nicole wid­owed at 27.

After Francois’s death, she renamed the brand Veuve Clicquot, as veuve means wid­ow in French. Her takeover of the busi­ness was unusu­al because women in Napoleonic France faced major legal and social restric­tions. A wid­ow enjoyed slight­ly more inde­pen­dence than a mar­ried woman, but even then, it was still unheard of for a young woman to take con­trol of an export-ori­ent­ed wine house.

She inher­it­ed a busi­ness with much risk. Europe was dis­rupt­ed by war, trade block­ades, and eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty. Champagne was con­sid­ered a tem­pera­men­tal lux­u­ry. After cham­pagne under­goes fer­men­ta­tion in the bot­tle, yeast sed­i­ment remains inside, cre­at­ing a cloudy appear­ance. What was poured was murky instead of clear and bub­bly. This uncer­tain­ty led many to spend their dol­lars on red wine, a much safer bet.

But Barbe had not inher­it­ed a vine­yard in Bordeaux or Burgundy. So, she leaned her kitchen table against a wall and drilled holes into it to hold her fer­ment­ing bot­tles at an angle. She called it her rid­dling rack. Every day, work­ers would spin each bot­tle slight­ly, push­ing the sed­i­ment into the neck, where it could be removed. 

The result was crys­tal-clear cham­pagne. Riddling (or remuage) is used to this very day in cham­pagne (and sparkling wine) production.

Are you a Rosé All Day girlie? Thank our girl. 

She cre­at­ed the first Rosé cham­pagne by blend­ing Veuve Clicquot with red pinot. She mar­ket­ed her cham­pagne out­side of France, a bold com­mer­cial bet dur­ing polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble times — espe­cial­ly for the Napoleonic era, when trade routes were risky and inter­na­tion­al mar­kets could dis­ap­pear overnight. She under­stood that prod­uct and sto­ry are insep­a­ra­ble, under­stood that a brand becomes pow­er­ful when qual­i­ty and iden­ti­ty rein­force each oth­er. Her cham­pagne had to be excel­lent, but it also had to be asso­ci­at­ed with ele­gance, con­sis­ten­cy, cel­e­bra­tion, and confidence.

She suc­ceed­ed in a world designed to under­es­ti­mate her. Early nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe offered women lit­tle room to lead, espe­cial­ly in inter­na­tion­al trade. Yet she learned the busi­ness, made deci­sions for her­self, and took risks that many more estab­lished men would have avoided. 

She turned per­son­al loss into pub­lic achieve­ment. Widowhood was not the defin­ing tragedy of her life, but the begin­ning of her lega­cy. As a small busi­ness own­er myself, I can learn much from her.

First, sto­ry sells. 

She cre­at­ed her per­fect client through build­ing the champagne’s iden­ti­ty in a time before web­sites and social media. I have nev­er mar­ket­ed my yoga stu­dio to all peo­ple, but to those par­tic­u­lar peo­ple who look at the styl­ized, curat­ed yoga con­tent online and think, that’s not me. I wrote a sto­ry about who the OM place is for (the oth­er 95% of the pop­u­la­tion, who val­ue how they feel and think over how they look).

Second, exper­tise matters. 

Barbe knew the details of pro­duc­tion, trade, and qual­i­ty. She wore every hat in that famed cham­pagne house. Any yoga stu­dio own­er will agree that teach­ing class­es takes far less time and ener­gy than the oth­er 700 things that need to be accom­plished in any giv­en day (from sweep­ing floors to post­ing online to mak­ing Canva fly­ers to post­ing pay­roll to con­firm­ing and rebook­ing ses­sions … the nev­er-end­ing list is long and exhausting).

Third, bold­ness mat­ters, but only when guid­ed by sound judgment. 

She took risks, but they were informed. When I opened 26 years ago, every­one at the bank sug­gest­ed I open a stu­dio in Lexington where the mar­ket might bet­ter sup­port “this yoga thing” (their exact word­ing). But I ran the num­bers and knew that if I were patient, it would pay off. Now I am one of only two ded­i­cat­ed stu­dios in town (the oth­er has been open less than a year), while there are 15 ded­i­cat­ed yoga stu­dios in Lexington, with count­less oth­er gyms and stu­dios that offer yoga classes.

And final­ly, resilience matters. 

No busi­ness leader sur­vives with­out the capac­i­ty to adapt and endure when cir­cum­stances become dif­fi­cult. Like, say, through a glob­al pan­dem­ic, where my beloved stu­dents made sure to sup­port me finan­cial­ly while I was shut­tered. Yoga Alliance esti­mates that around 30% of ded­i­cat­ed yoga stu­dios closed per­ma­nent­ly dur­ing this time.

But in the end, for me the real les­son of Barbe is to not let the world name your lim­its. Barbe reminds me that great­ness is often built not by those who inher­it ease, but by those who meet adver­si­ty with inven­tion and turn lim­i­ta­tion into momentum.

And that’s some­thing I think we can all raise a glass to. So, the next time you hear that sat­is­fy­ing pop of the cork, say a toast to my friend Barbe.