Barbe-Nicole’s generation grew up in a transformed society where traditional social structures had collapsed and commerce defined individual identity. In particular, fashion became a new staple of life and the market for the working class, rather than only the upper class, and these trends were inspired by post-revolutionary ideals. This contributed to the sustained status of Barbe-Nicole’s family, whose wealth was built on textiles. Combined with her father’s political strategy in aligning with revolutionaries, their family prospered despite the revolt.

On June 10, 1798, the 20-year-old Barbe-Nicole married François Clicquot, son of textile merchant and wine broker Philippe Clicquot, in an illegal Catholic ceremony conducted secretly in an underground cellar beneath Reims. These interconnected cellars, originally Roman quarries, would later become essential to champagne production.

François was energetic and well educated, playing violin beautifully and conversant in literature and philosophy. However, Barbe-Nicole soon noticed his moodiness and tendency toward depression. His parents, Philippe and Catherine-Françoise Clicquot, had sent him to Switzerland from 1792 to 1794 to avoid military conscription, later securing him a noncombatant administrative position through strategic connections.

The marriage united two prominent neighboring families. Barbe-Nicole’s great-grandfather, Nicolas Ruinart, had founded the world’s first champagne house in 1729. Both fathers gave the couple substantial dowries, including vineyards in premier wine-growing villages like Bouzy, Tours-sur-Marne, and Chigny-la-Montagne. The newlyweds explored these properties, visiting important sites like the Allart de Maisonneuve vineyards and meeting established growers like the Cattier family. These connections allowed François to develop his lacking knowledge of the French wine industry, which held strict standards for producing and rating wines.

François immediately became a partner in Clicquot-Muiron and Son (Muiron being his mother’s family name), determined to expand the family’s wine brokerage internationally. The company was primarily a textile business with wine distribution as a sideline, purchasing ready-made wines from local vignerons. François’s cautious father, Philippe, was skeptical about international expansion during wartime but agreed François could pursue his plan once peace returned. Barbe-Nicole, inheriting her father’s pragmatic business instincts, contrasted François, with lofty goals and few language or business skills to follow through on them.

François Clicquot set out to learn about champagne with plans to sell it internationally. Late 18th-century champagne bore little resemblance to modern versions. It was extremely sweet—often containing two hundred to three hundred grams of sugar per bottle, far more than today’s sweetest dessert wines. Its brownish-pink color, called “eye of the partridge” or described as gray (26), referred to white wine made from black grapes.

The wine’s sparkle originated accidentally during the Little Ice Age, when unusually cold winters caused fermentation to stall. When temperatures warmed in spring, yeast resumed consuming sugar in sealed casks, producing carbon dioxide trapped inside. This secondary fermentation became the basis for modern champagne production. Contrary to the popular legend invented by Moët & Chandon, Dom Pierre Pérignon was tasked with eliminating these bubbles. The British were the first to commercialize sparkling champagne, using stronger English glass in the 1660s to bottle imported wines from the Champagne region.

Sparkling wine gained brief popularity at the French royal court under Louis XIV and Louis XV, when Barbe-Nicole’s great-grandfather, Nicolas Ruinart, founded the world’s first champagne house in 1729. However, this initial boom ended with a market crash in the 1740s, caused by overproduction and inferior wines, which left champagne as a mere regional curiosity. The industry awaited reinvention by entrepreneurs willing to take risks.

In November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France. That same year, on March 20, Barbe-Nicole gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Clémentine. Despite her family’s wealth and François’s enthusiasm for the wine business, Barbe-Nicole faced an increasingly narrow domestic future. Her sister, also named Clémentine, and sister-in-law Thérèse became fashionable hostesses, while married women of Barbe-Nicole’s class were expected to achieve respectable anonymity.

Barbe-Nicole’s commercial education likely occurred through association with her husband and father-in-law. François knew little about wine when he began expanding the family sideline, and Barbe-Nicole became his sounding board during his self-education. She learned that other women worked in the wine business—Dame Geoffrey, the Widow Germon, the Widow Robert, and the Widow Blanc, one of the Clicquot’s own suppliers. Because wine wasn’t yet considered the profitable commercial venture it is today, women could navigate these spaces with less scrutiny than other industries. However, these women were almost exclusively widows from lower social classes for whom work was a financial necessity rather than a choice.

After the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville brought peace, François hired Louis Bohne, a talented German salesman he met in Basel, to help capture international markets. In 1802, following the Treaty of Amiens with Britain, Louis traveled to London to establish sales but found the market dominated by competitors like Jean-Rémy Moët. Champagne was significantly more expensive than it is today, and access to wealthy, aristocratic circles was essential to selling it.

That summer, Philippe Clicquot retired, leaving François in complete control. His first year proved disastrous. A severe heat wave destroyed most of the 1802 harvest across the Champagne region, leaving the company unable to fill existing orders. In the midst of this crisis, François made a risky decision that, despite the dangers and terrible timing, the company would begin bottling its own wines rather than simply distributing others’ products.