Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg

Prepare yourself a picnic of brie, baguette, and Veuve Clicquot before you read this book, or you'll find yourself craving those things whilst you traverse Europe during the Napoleon wars. I'm looking up the winery, region, and studying the map now to get a feel for the terroir of this novel.

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From triple-gold award-winning author Rebecca Rosenberg, a novel about the first woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot.

Champagne, France, 1800. Twenty-year-old Barbe-Nicole inherited Le Nez (an uncanny sense of smell that makes her picky, persnickety, and particularly perceptive) from her great-grandfather, a renowned champagne maker. Her parents see Le Nez as a curse that must be hidden and try to marry her off to an unsuspecting suitor. But Barbe-Nicole is haunted by her Grand-mere’s dying wish for her to use Le Nez to make great champagne. When she learns her childhood sweetheart, Francois Clicquot, wants to start a winery, she rejects her parents’ suitors and marries Francois despite his mental illness.

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot must now cope with Francois’ suicide, the difficulties of starting a winery, and the Napoleon Codes preventing women from owning a business. All this while Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, wages six wars against the European monarchs, crippling her ability to sell her champagne. Using Le Nez, she beats the impossible hardships of Napoleon’s wars, often challenging Napoleon himself. When Veuve Clicquot falls in love with her sales manager, Louis Bohne, who asks her to marry, she must choose between losing her winery to her husband, as dictated by Napoleon Code, or losing Louis.

In the ultimate showdown, Veuve Clicquot defies Napoleon, risking imprisonment and even death.