Happy Good Friday everyone,

France! What a nation. Here are three things they take extremely seriously in France; language, food, and fine wines. As if by coincidence, today’s Fem Friday covers the French language, food and fine wines.

The inspiration behind today’s theme came from a friend telling me the French for mansplaining: mecspliquer. I didn’t know enough French to properly enjoy this the first time round, so here it it:

Mec = guy

Expliquer = to explain

M’expliquer = explain it to me

In a bonus round, unrelated to feminism or women; if you want to know what they call fake news in France, it’s apparently infaux.

It was only last weekend that I read about Eugénie Brazier of Lyon as the first woman to receive three Michelin stars – apparently that is somewhat disputed, but she was certainly the first woman to receive six Michelin stars (for two restaurants each getting three – this isn’t like when they open a new hotel and say it’s an eight star hotel because the Burj Khalifa is a seven star hotel)

Brazier was awarded those first six stars having been in professional kitchens for just 15 years. She was 38 years old and the chef-owner of two establishments, La Mère Brazier in Lyon and a restaurant at Col de la Luère. In a career that spanned half a century, it’s scrimping to focus solely on that singular achievement. Her two restaurants held six Michelin stars for a total of 20 years. La Mère Brazier held three stars for 28 years.

https://www.eater.com/2016/8/12/12382076/eugenie-brazier

Finally, fine wines! Isn’t champagne great, and did you know that it was a woman, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, who innovated modern champagne production. Before her, champagne beset by problems created by the dead yeast at the bottom, which sounds unappealing. Barbe-Nicole's story has everything – true love, financial peril, and marketing:

Facing bankruptcy, Barbe-Nicole took a huge business gamble: she knew that the Russian market, as soon as the Napoleonic Wars ended, would be thirsty for the kind of champagne she was making–an extremely sweet champagne that contained nearly 300 grams of sugar (about double that of today’s sweet dessert wines, like a Sauterne) […] There was only one problem: the naval blockades that had crippled commercial shipping during the wars. Barbe-Nicole smuggled the vast majority of her best wine out of France as far as Amsterdam, where it waited for peace to be declared. As soon as peace was declared, the shipment made its way to Russia, beating her competitors by weeks. Soon after her champagne debuted in Russia, Tsar Alexander I announced that it was the only kind that he would drink. Word of his preference spread throughout the Russian court, which was essentially ground-zero for international marketing.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-widow-who-created-the-champagne-industry-180947570/

Have a lovely day, mes amis,

Alex.