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Over twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to be traveling in France and I visited the Champagne region. In between tours of different wineries and copious amounts of free samples, I heard the story of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, the founder of Veuve Clicquot. How do you not find a woman fascinating who runs a business, develops new innovations, works with smugglers to get her champagne out of the country during the Napoleonic war, and was a widow raising a daughter? I scribbled in my travel journal that I thought she would make a great character. That’s when I learned widows founded many of the great champagne houses. At the time, the only way a woman could own a business was if they were a widow. The present-day character is divorced, but she often thinks it would be easier if she were a widow, if her husband died instead of that he chose to leave her. That gave me the initial title for the story: The Champagne Widows.
When I had a publishing deal, the editor and I discussed the title. There was already a book with the title The Champagne Widows. Although there are many books with the same title, we decided to change it to avoid confusion. There were endless lists of options. Contenders included: Champagne Secrets, The Women of Champagne, The Widow’s Guide, The Champagne Gamble. In the end we went with The Champagne Letters, which, when we stumbled upon it, seemed the perfect fit.
The book goes back and forth between the 1800s where the Barbe-Nicole Clicquot is writing letters to her great-granddaughter to tell her about her life, and the present day when Natalie has fled her divorce and run away to Paris for vacation. Natalie finds...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Champagne Letters.
My Book The Movie: The Champagne Letters.
Q&A with Kate MacIntosh.
--Marshal Zeringue
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