Episode #105 Women, Champagne, and Inspiration with Cynthia Coutu
On today’s episode, Sharri Harmel speaks with Cynthia Coutu. Cynthia is the founder of Delectabulles, a company all about women and champagne. She has a wealth of information when it comes to champagne and has created a space for women to step into the knowledge that they could take anywhere with them and feel more confident while also having the chance to network with other women. Listen in on Cynthia’s journey of creating her own business as well as the history she shares about champagne and the women behind it!
Cynthia Coutu’s website, www.delectabulles.com
Cynthia Coutu’s Instagram, www.instagram.com/delectabulles/
Cynthia Coutu’s Facebook, www.facebook.com/delectabulles/
Resources:
Tanya Heath who makes shoes with interchangeable heels mentioned on the show
The Global Female Leader Summit
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Episode #105 Women, Champagne, and Inspiration with Cynthia Coutu
Sharri Harmel: Well, hello my friends and welcome to the Extraordinary Women podcast, number 105. Yes. That’s 105 and I titled this podcast Women, Champagne, and Inspiration. I’m Sharri Harmel, I’m the editor and chief creator of Extraordinary Women. Well, this week, I have a very fun conversation with Cynthia Coutu who founded Delectabulles, a company all about women and champagne. How great is that? Cynthia has a wealth of information about champagne, as well as the history of several of the different champagne companies that she shares in our podcast. And remember sparkling wine cannot be called champagne unless it is produced in the champagne region of France. Well, Cynthia obviously loves champagne as do I and you will see that she actually has a glass of champagne while we chatted. I would’ve joined her, honestly, if I had been in her same time zone. Well, I hope that you enjoy our conversation and if you’re interested in learning more about what Cynthia offers, check out delectabulles.com and information is all down in the show notes and you will there find her classes and tours and without any further ado, as they say, let’s get started.
Sharri Harmel: Hi, Cynthia. I am so happy you are with me today and not only am I so excited to hear your story, but I also love champagne, so it’s like the best of two worlds here. I can’t wait to get started. So welcome.
Cynthia Coutu: Thank you for inviting me and since it’s 6:30 at night and since you love champagne, I will open a bottle and sip along while we chat.
Sharri Harmel: And it’s only noon here in Boston. And so I’m just going to live through you right now and imagine that I can have a glass of champagne and still work
Cynthia Coutu: Well every time’s a good time for champagne breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Sharri Harmel: Now you’re opening the bottle of champagne and I should share with all of you that Cynthia shared something with me before we even started, which maybe is a good to ramp up to our conversation, you might want to show the champagne bottle.
Sharri Harmel: You said it’s produced by a woman, is that correct?
Cynthia Coutu: Yes. I only use champagnes made by women in my business. And Christine is 10th generation grower and about, oh my gosh, three generations ago, she started making her own champagne. So she started making champagne about three generations ago and she makes this amazing advent calendar with 24 little baby bottles like this it’s enough for about a glass and a half, two glass, depending on your the size of your glass and this particular QA is called Intel D because they wanted, they came up with a name for their QA, but it was already taken and protected by trademark. And so they were thinking, okay, well, what name can we give it? And they came up with Intel Z, which is, which means forbidden. Oh, sure. It’s the forbidden, uh, QV.
Sharri Harmel: I love that. And for all of you, whether you’re Christian or not, what a fabulous idea to order 24 of those little bottles.
Cynthia Coutu: And 13 different Cuba’s in the bottle in the box and she ships to the United States as well as obviously all over Europe.
Cynthia Coutu: cheers to our chat.
Sharri Harmel: Absolutely. So, which is just a great place to start. How did you get to where you are? You’re a Canadian I read. Is that correct? And somehow, almost 30 years ago you ended up somewhere. I don’t know if it was Paris to begin with.
Cynthia Coutu: Yes, so I went to, a French DC, a French high school from France in Canada. And have more or less the same education as any French person. I probably know more about the history of France than the history of Canada. But I went because I went to this private school, everyone sorts of became a doctor lawyer or Indian chief and I thought I wanted to become a doctor and I studied biology in Canada as pre-med, and then realized, uh, no, that’s not what I wanna do. And I switched to photography and photography in Canada, the art world is very incest. And in order to survive as an artist, you have to be an art critic, a professor, a writer. And I was sort of disappointed with the caliber of my professors at my university and figured, okay if I’m gonna go down that road, I’m gonna come to Paris to do a master’s in art history. So that’s what brought me to Paris 31 years ago almost today. And then, I loved wine and cheese so much that I found a way to stay. And I got a job at the Canadian embassy at the beginning. It was an executive admin position. I was just doing mostly logistics for G seven summits and visits of high-level officials, like when the prime minister would come or the governor general. and I had to work a lot with the press that issue of the embassy, and we really hit it off and he said, Cynthia, you have to come work with me in communications. And I said, Noma to do what. And he asked me what I like to do. And the internet was just getting started back then, so early nineties. And I said, you know, you send French journalists to Canada, bragging that we’re at the leading edge of new technologies. Have you looked at the embassy website? No, it’s a piece of, and I’ll keep this PG rated. I said I would love to redo the embassy.
And so they created a position for me, and I taught myself how to code because back then the only people who were really into designing websites were computer engineers. I had to, I guess my job was supposed to be 50% web, 40% media relations and 10%, um, PR. Okay. And it ended up being like 150% media, um, answering French journalist questions about Canada. And two years later, they put me on the web full time. I launched a new website for the embassy and then all the other embassies wanted a website like ours. So I built a template for them. And then, the equivalent of the state department so the department of foreign affairs would lend me for any type of web project that had an international component. And one day I was evaluating a website for jobs for Canadian youth. And there was a section working in international organizations. To make a long story short, I ended up applying for a job at the O E C D, which is an international organization based in Paris. It was set up as part of the Marshall plan after World War II to advise on well originally it was to help Europe rebuild after World War II and now it’s basically a think tank for governments because every government struggles with how to finance healthcare, how to do this, how to do that. And so I managed their digital communications for 16 years and. I mean, there’s good, bad, and ugly.
When you work in for a big organization, you know, it’s not as bad as the UN, but I had some great bosses, some not so great bosses, but there were a lot of politics, and I spent a lot of my time dealing with big egos internal politics. Sure, sure. And a couple of days before my 50th birthday, I was informed that I was being reorged out and that was nice. But you know how sometimes things happen in life and once I recovered from the shock, I realized it was a blessing, not even in disguise, because I had suffered from every type of stress related illness. I had shingles twice, kidney stones, you name it. And so it was an opportunity for me to stop and think about what I wanted to do next.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. And take a breath. What an interesting career though, I mean, for those of you that are young, that are listening to this, you know, it just tells me again over and over how you think you’re starting in one place and you’re going to end up in a certain place, but just give that up because and also have faith that it is going to move in a direction that might be a whole lot more interesting than you thought And then at the end, you know, at the end of the professional career, what’s going to follow. So you sat down and said, here I am, I’m in Paris. You lived in Paris throughout all of that time, correct? And then?
Cynthia Coutu: Yes. Well, I had a couple of constraints. One was a teenage daughter, and I didn’t want to leave Paris and force her to say goodbye to her father or her friends or anything. So I had to find a way to stay in France. And it was tricky because the whole time I was at the Canadian embassy and the O E C D I had semi diplomatic status. And so I had to give in my diplomatic card, which meant that I had to deal with French administration and not DC. You need a lot of champagne to get yourself to that.
Sharri Harmel: That’s a good way of putting it.
Cynthia Coutu: So I guess I have the luxury of knowing that when I turned 60, I’d get my O E C D so I had 10 years that I could do something that made my heart sing and my sister who also lives in Paris said, well, wine, wine’s your passion. Why don’t you do something related to wine? So that was a little light bulb that went off in my head. And I thought I knew a lot about wine, but I figured it would be better to get a piece of paper that said I did. So I looked around, did my homework. And I decided to sign up for the wine and spirit education trust program. So it’s kind of like the gold standard for anyone who wants to work in the wine industry, but not as a Somi on the restaurant floor.
Sharri Harmel: Right. And that’s Ws E T for short. Correct?
Cynthia Coutu: For all of you, it’s internationally recognized. So like if someday I wanted to move to another country, at least I know that it would be a certification that was recognized. And so I signed up for the program and my last day at the O E C D I received an email asking me to teach an international MBA class at a university in Paris and it was about enterprise 2.0, how companies or governments use collaborative platforms to get feedback and so on. And so I was starting wine school and teaching at university in January, and it was the first Christmas where I actually had time to bake cookies or get ready for Christmas. It was exciting because it was two things that I hadn’t done before and so I didn’t have to feel sorry for myself losing a job. And at the university, I had 20 students and 19 of them were young women. And it was just a fluke that year, that cohort, that all the candidates accepted were well, 19 out of 20 were women. And what I found fascinating was that during the breaks and after class, these young women would come and pick my brain about the good and the bad and the ugly. And it had nothing related to the course material. It was like, I’ve got this manager, that’s a pain in my rear end, how do I deal with them? Can you advise me on my LinkedIn profile? Can you tell me, and I was like, wow, there’s a lot of young women out there that need a career coach or a mentor of some sort. And so that sort of was another light bulb that went off my head and one of the things that I never had time for as a single working mom was networking, going out for lunch with colleagues, going out for drinks after work. I had too much on my plate to be able to do that. And I realized the importance of networking. And so, because I think that’s one of the reasons why I got reorged out is because
Sharri Harmel: To advocate for you or to, to even sing your praises?
Cynthia Coutu: Well, at least in the right places, I had lots of people singing my praises, but not in the right places.
Cynthia Coutu: And because I didn’t really have a Social life while I was working at the O E C D, I made a point of catching up with old friends, former colleagues, and I was meeting a lot of women my age, so in their fifties who had been there, done that, saw the movie and got the t-shirt, you know, they had successful careers. They had pretty much finished raising their children. They were looking for something more, something more meaningful, and they wanted, they were sitting on mountains of experience and knowledge, and they wanted to give back. There was, those are two sort of light bulbs that went off and then at wine school, I realized a couple of things. One, the more you learn about wine, the more you realize there is to learn, because it’s just on everything, you know, history, geography, geology, culture, chemistry. And so I decided to specialize in a style of wine, in sparkling wine. And then the other thing that I realized is just how male dominated the wine industry is in France.
Sharri Harmel: Would you say all over the world?
Cynthia Coutu: I don’t think it’s as bad in some of the new world countries. Old world countries? Uh, yes. I started seeking out other female wine professionals and. I went to a tasting organized by Fable Gun, which was 12 or so female winemakers in Burgundy. And I was chatting with one of them about the differences between men and women when it comes to wine tasting,
Sharri Harmel: fascinating question, I love this
Cynthia Coutu: And she told me that men and women didn’t behave the same. That men tended to be more interested in the technical information, like the grape varieties, the methods of vinification and that they use their knowledge as power. She said, so many guys come up to my stand and start mansplaining to me how I make my wine. And she just kind of rolled her eyes. And I asked her, I said, well, what about women? And she said in mixed company that they’re either intimidated or bored. And so that gave me an idea what would happen if I did women only tastings?
Sharri Harmel: Oh, interesting. And how long did it take before you said I’m gonna try out this idea?
Cynthia Coutu: Six months and that is more due to French bureaucracy.
Sharri Harmel: In America or Canada, you would roll that out in a week.
Cynthia Coutu: Well, I was championing at the bit to create a business, connecting all the dots of what I had discovered during my period at the university at wine school and so on. But it took from April to November before I got the green light from the French administration to create my own business and stay in France. And what I did is connect all the dots. Originally my concept for Delectabulles was a champagne networking club for and the idea was for champagne to get younger and older women together to network and mentor each other and so on, but I realized very quickly that women could tell me which champagne they preferred and why, but they didn’t know. And so I designed a workshop specifically geared towards women to give them the tools and the confidence to express
Sharri Harmel: what they like, why they like it.
Cynthia Coutu: Yes. And I also Des I decided at that point, women only, and only champagnes and other sparkling wines made by women. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years.
Sharri Harmel: It’s so interesting though, because tell me if this is correct, it kind of sounds like the, your former career, if you wanna call it that you just talked about the fact that you maybe didn’t strategically network as well as you maybe could have, and that would’ve prolonged your career. Not that at this point, you would even want of that to have happened, but yet you’re in now in a field you’ve created a company that’s really around networking may not be strategic, but yet it is in many ways, which is a total about phase is, am I reading it right?
Cynthia Coutu: I’m learning from my mistakes.
Sharri Harmel: I know we all learn from our mistakes and sometimes we do ’em over and over. Quite honestly, if I speaking of myself, but I find it so fascinating that you’ve created a space for women to step into the knowledge that they could take anywhere with them and maybe feel more confident about talking about things or, and young women today, young professional, you not even that young, they’re doing the ordering when they’re entertaining out and about. And therefore the more information that you have is power. Let’s face it. you want both the power as well as the connections with other women if that makes any sense. Tell the group though about the different parts of the business you created, cuz you still have that networking group, but you also have really interesting classes and gatherings and work. Is it primarily always women? Cuz, you talked about kind of a team building exercise. This can be a team building event. So tell us more.
Cynthia Coutu: Well, it’s like any business, it evolves, and I’ve always tried to, I mean, one of the lessons that I learned from managing websites is to be customer centric. You know, there’s no point designing something, whether it be a business or a website that doesn’t correspond to what people want, you know, and so I would ask people what they would want, and I’d observe. And so what I realized for the first six months, I only hosted workshops, champagne workshops for women and only use champagnes made by women. And then I, and I realized during these workshops, they network, you know, so I don’t need to call it a networking workshop because it just happens naturally and so many relationships have been built through these workshops. You know, wine in general tends to oil any type of relationship and diplomacy and then a lot of the women started asking me, can you take us to visit the winery and meet these women? And I was like, sure. And so I started getting into, I guess, wine tourism. I also, you know, to entertain myself, I didn’t want to just host the same workshop over and over with different people. So I started partnering with a female entre at least once so it could be anything, it could be a chef, it could be an artist, a writer, you name it, a shoe inventor. There’s yeah, I did a tasting in, a shoe shop. She happens to be a fellow Canadian who married a Frenchman, and she invented these amazing shoes with interchangeable heels. You can change the height, the style, the color with just a click. Her name’s Tanya Heath, if you want to look her up and include it in the show notes. Because any woman who travels or multitask during the days, this is like a God sent. And I was like, how come more people haven’t I never heard of these. How come more? More women need to know about these. And so I convinced her to do a tasting in her shop. I said, you know, it’s not the idea isn’t for that the women to try the shoes on in the shop, but I just want them to know about them. And she was really resisting the concept. I’m going down a rabbit hole, but she had really bad experiences with women, when she tried to set up her business, she tried to get investment. She went to see some female business angels who were French and said, you know, your Canadian high heels are vulgar. This is never gonna work. And so she kind of felt burnt, I guess by other females. And I said, look, trust me, Tanya, the women who come to my events are like-minded, just give it a shot. So I twisted her arm, and she loved it. She called me the next day and said, Cynthia, you’ve reconciled me with women. You know, it did help her business because a lot of the women did go to buy shoes, going back and going to shoes and so on. And now she’s ditched all her French girlfriends. I feel bad about that, but, or for example, the painting behind me, I did a workshop, I did a couple, one was called 50 shades of pink and oh, she has an interesting story. She comes from a champagne family her family decided to give all the responsibilities to her brother. And at the same time she found out her husband, was interested in just about every secretary he had. So to cope, she taught herself how to paint and what she does is she tastes a champagne and translates it into a painting. And so it’s a different way of understanding and talking about champagne. And so I had five or six different Jose champagnes. She brought a dozen or so paintings of the Jose champagne and one of the champagne producers came to the event. So I try to, I still to this day, try to partner with a female entrepreneur at least once a month. And I keep all of the events that are sort of done under the umbrella of Delectabulles are female only, but people do book me for private sessions, and they can be team buildings, mostly team buildings and those, or workshops for couples, for example, who have friends visiting in Paris and so on. And they can be for both men and women and women and the same thing for my trips. Sometimes I organize group trips only for women. And other times I’m booked for private excursions, where it’s men, women, children, whoever.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah, so this sounds just absolutely fascinating to me actually.
And the entrepreneurial connection. I mean, how brilliant and how exciting though for you too, because you’re getting that variety that sometimes you don’t get certainly in a nine to five or a nine to seven job or whatever it might be, and you get to creatively. What could I do with this particular female entrepreneur?
Cynthia Coutu: I mean, there are two perks to my job. One, I get paid to drink champagne and the other is, so I’ve been doing this about five years now. I have met, so many fascinating and inspiring women. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the global female leader summit in Berlin, it’s kind of like a Davos for women and they invite CEOs of big businesses, ministers, you name it. And it’s a three-day affair in Berlin. And the chairperson heard about me and called me and said, look, we’ve got the summit that lasts three days and we’ve got these three icebreaker sessions before the summit actually kicks off. Can you lead one of the summits, one of the icebreaker sessions with champagne to get these women to know each other a little bit better before it kicks off. Cuz, you know what it’s like to go to a conference. Unless you’re like super outgoing and saying, hi I’m Cynthia, duh. And so I said, give me 24 hours or 48 hours to think about something I could do to get these women to get to know each other better and I’ll get back to you. And so I did, and I came up with this idea. She gave me the list of people, who of names who had registered and just using my intuition. I grouped the women into three different groups that I called Chardon, Pinot, and mane, which are the three main great varieties that go into champagne. And this chairwoman who asked me to do this kept going on and on about how passionate I was about champagne. And I had never, it was my blind spot. I had never really thought that I was particularly passionate because I’m the type of person if I get into something it’s 150%. And so it got me thinking about passion and so when NA moon arrived at this session, I gave them their name tag, and I said, you’re a Chardonnay. That’s one of the three main great varieties. You need to go find the other Chardonnays in the room and ask them what their passion is. And if that passion has helped them or hindered them to get to where they are today. So I was forcing these women to do a deep dive. And then, you know, I let them do that for about 15 minutes and then I introduced myself, showed them how to open a bottle of champagne properly, told them the story about the woman who made the champagne and then let them open their own bottles. Because if I had a Euro for every time a woman told me that she had never opened the bottle herself, that she always gave it to the man in the room. Really? I wouldn’t need to work. And so it forced them to practice what I had just taught them. And then they got on with their passion know each other. And some of the women that were at this event were, do you know the statue, the fearless girl? So the woman behind that whole project was there, she fell in love with me and I’m still in touch with her. And so I get to meet all kinds of fascinating, incredible women from all kinds of walks of life whether in champagne or in business or arts or you name it so I’m having a blast.
Sharri Harmel: I can so relate. And I think what you’re also sharing though, which Cynthia, I think, is such a good message to any woman that’s listening to this podcast and saying, what can I do is. Who are you going to interface with in that business? And it, is it going to excite you? Is it going to be people that you want to be around? Because you and I have both chosen a path that we probably met women that we would’ve never met if we had chosen to say, write books, not that I could write a book, but I mean, unless I was interviewing them, I wouldn’t meet them. And yet those are the things that bring you joy in life that make you truly energized. I bet you walked out of every one of the ice break session or the, I don’t know if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, but as you moved from group to group, you were jazzed. You were and walked out of there going that was fun. Is that true?
Cynthia Coutu: Yeah. And whenever I host an event, it takes me at least two, three hours to wind down from it because I’m so energized.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. So why do women because I read some of your statistics and one of the numbers was, it was like, what was the percentage of women versus men that drink champagne?
Cynthia Coutu: Well, it’s not a statistic about drinking champagne, but it is a statistic. It’s 70% of champagne is purchased by women purchased.
Sharri Harmel: And so that then relates more to like a food list rather than who’s drinking it is that, you know, like a grocery list, if you wanna call it that yes. They’re out shopping.
Cynthia Coutu: But men and women don’t buy the same kind of style of champagne. There’s a couple of things that I’ve realized in the last five years is that one, women are just as interested in men about the technical information. but not for the same reasons. Men want to be able to show off their knowledge and use it as power. And, you know, that’s not specific to the wine industry. Probably just about every single industry out there it’s like that, whereas women are to empower themselves. They’re the ones interesting who tend to do when you say grocery list, they are the ones who buy the everyday wine or the wine for get togethers, so they want to understand what style of champagne they prefer and why, and how to get the best bang for their buck. It started as a joke, someone said, oh, you empower women one bottle of champagne at a time. And so now I use that as a tagline. Cause yeah, it’s true.
That’s exactly what I do. Yeah. But so women are interested in learning about champagne to figure out what they like in terms of you know, do they prefer Alon to blonde? Do they prefer a young fruity champagne, or an old vintage and they will also want to understand and learn more about champagne and food pairing, because they want to make sure they get the right bottle for the food that they’re serving. So men tend to buy vintage bottles of champagne. That’s the bottle with a year on the front and it’s very different because vintage bottles are like collector’s items. And so the guy can say, look, how big minus look I’ve got this year. I’ve got that year. I’ve got this year. I’ve got that year. So men tend to buy the bottles that be for presence or to show off, you know, look how big mine is whereas women tend to buy it for their personal consumption or to make sure they please their guests.
Sharri Harmel: Isn’t that interesting. A whole different perspective. When you walk into a wine shop and imagine being someone who works in a wine shop and in comes a man looking for champagne in comes a woman looking for champagne. That’s very interesting. Did you think it transposes even into the wine world? Now, I saw you do classes where you’ll do pairings with wine. But years ago I went on a wine tour with O Chateau in Paris. Now I will do one of yours in the future truly. And we went to one of these old houses.
It was if I can remember right, it was like LA MEISON pane, penny. P E N E T. I think I have it right. I may not, but what was interesting and how it relates, I think to this conversation is that throughout the lunch, we had a sit-down lunch. Throughout the lunch, there was different champagne paired with different courses and that’s something, especially as Americans, you don’t see as much that it’s like it’s viewed as an apéritif it’s viewed as something you have before. You sit down for the dinner. Is that something you talk about and help women to potentially? I mean, what a great book club idea that we we’re going to do a book club, but we’re going to do a book club pairing one champagne with the different courses.
Cynthia Coutu: Yeah. So that’s my master course. It’s all about that. I cover everything sort of from grape to glass all the different factors that influence the aromas and flavors of a particular style of champagne, and that also affect the price tag. And for example, we start out with trying the same champagne in two different styles of glasses so that you understand the difference that the shape of a glass can makes. So like the coop flus flu, like, you see I’m drinking out of a tulip glass. And so I explain why a tulip glass and why you should only use your coops for ice cream or dessert, but not for champagne. And I talk about the physics about it as well, so we start with that. And then we usually start with Alonda blonde champagne made by one female producer and it’s young fruity, and then I get another blonde of blonde champagne that is old and intense. And I walk people through the differences in the vinification process that affect the smell and taste of that champagne. During that time I get them to try different nibbly food like potato chips or GJA or things like that that pair well with champagne and I explained about the acidity, the mouthwatering, and then I get them to try side by side Alonda blonde and Alon DEWA, so a white champagne made from red grapes. And that’s when I bring out food, I bring out something fishy, seafo
od like smoke salmon or oysters and something meaty like Shari or pets, things like that. And I get them to try the blonde, the blonde with the smoked salmon. The blonde Delan with the Shak tree, the blonde DEO with the salmon. And then they realize, oh my God, if I’m serving fish or seafood, I need to serve Alonda. Blada. If I’m serving meats, whether it be like Thanksgiving, Turkey, or shelf tea, I need a blonde DWA or a champagne with more Pinot in the blend and it’s by experiencing it and tasting that it’s nasty when you have and then I’ll serve cheeses, for example, with different champagnes. And so the women leave my workshops, they’re equipped, they have all the elements they know to understand. If I’m having a, and I wanna choose a champagne, this is what I need to go for. If I’m at a wedding and it’s to go for the, if it’s my daughter’s wedding, for example, and I want a champagne to go with the wedding cake, I know I don’t want a bone-dry champagne with a sweet wedding cake because it’ll be bitter. So all of my workshops, I talk about food and champagne pairing and why champagne’s the ultimate wine for pairing with food. And that’s part of my mission too, is to introduce people to that concept. Cuz you can do a whole Thanksgiving meal with different styles of champagne. Once you understand the principles, you can apply them, and you can have fun. You can get all your friends to, you can ask ’em okay. You bring a Jose; you bring one that has more Pinot. You bring one. And you can go through a whole champagne dinner and that’s a cultural difference. I would say, like in most countries, Champagne is a celebratory drink you know, for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, New Year’s Eve, but it’s actually one of the most food friendly wines.
Sharri Harmel: Would you say when you say that’s a cultural difference, would you say it’s different in France? Say than Canada in the us?
Cynthia Coutu: Well, it’s still, I wouldn’t say common in France to have a champagne from beginning to end of your meal. It is in champagne, but in other regions, it’s not that common. And that’s one of the things that I’ve learned from all of my champagne producer, friends in champagne are how to use champagne from beginning to start of the meal.
Sharri Harmel: yeah, very interesting. it’s interesting to me, but wine and that’s something we as Americans don’t really understand. Wine is so regional in France. It’s, you know, it wasn’t shipped from one region to another in. Old days. And wine’s been around a long time. It’s not like the us wine market at all. But there was a question you brought that, that went in and now went out, it’s
Cynthia Coutu: gone like a champagne bubble
Sharri Harmel: yes, exactly. It has to do with taste. Do you find. That the taste buds, as an example of, of French people versus American Canadian, Great Britain, is there a difference or do we all kind of, do we taste the, have the same taste, if that makes any sense.
Cynthia Coutu: Yeah. I wouldn’t say that there are differences in the taste buds themselves. Like from a biology, point of view, everyone has their own wine journey, and it depends on where you are on that wine journey. Like I think like a lot of people. I started out with big reds and moved my way to lighter reds and then white wines and champagne was sort of only at the end of my journey. Champagne’s a lot. I judge a lot of wine contests, champagne’s probably the most challenging wine to judge because it’s very delicate aromas and flavors. So to me, it really depends on where you are in your wine journey. Because I’ve met tons of French people who only drink champagne for celebratory reasons and have a hard time distinguishing the aromas and flavors in champagne. So, yeah, I’d say it has to do more with your experience and your journey into wine.
Sharri Harmel: Well, and it’s interesting also which it would change. For instance, the desserts in France are nowhere near as sweet as a dessert in America. As an example, we love our sugar in America. And so consequently, the pairing may be a little bit different, um, depending upon how one cooks or makes desserts or pastries or whatever.
Cynthia Coutu: Yeah. But I would say, I mean, there aren’t that many in champagne and food pairing, but okay. One the most common one is a dry, like the French will often serve a Jose champagne with dessert. And that’s for traditional historic reasons, way back up until about the 1950s, Jose champagne used to be really sweet. And so it made sense to serve it with dessert. And so a lot of French people grow up going to Granny’s place for Sunday lunch and being served a portion with dessert, except now one that’s bone dry. And so when you serve it with a dessert, even if it’s a, like a red Berry fruit dessert, it’s still not, let’s say to be nice, it’s not the best pairing, it’s better to go for a Demi sec, a sweet champagne with a dessert
Sharri Harmel: So the desserts in essence, haven’t changed one doesn’t change the champagne based on the dessert.
One needs to pay attention to the champagne, how the champagne has changed. As you said, the rose, as an example, were there always, were there always women in the champagne? vineyards, you know, we all know the Lyco story or whatever. Did they just kind of go recognized.
Cynthia Coutu: Well, I do a whole webinar that lasts two hours. The role of women in champagne and I call it bubbly, bad asses. Women in the history of champagne and it’s basically my research notes cuz I’m researching the role of women in the history of champagne for a book project. Maybe the book will be called bubbly bad asses. I don’t know but if I had to summarize it, I’d say that women have always played a role harvesting grapes and some of the less recognized or valued tasks in the vineyard. From the beginning of time, basically, or the beginning of grapes but when it comes specifically to champagne, women played an important role in during the 18th century, when champagne was being developed as a sparkling wine, it was a novelty, because they didn’t understand the science behind making bubbles sparks in line. There was a lot of hit and miss. And only about 3% of the wines made in champagne had bubbles. And so it was only the rich and famous who could afford to drink them. And it was mostly the quans, which is the polite word for prostitutes at court who realized, Ooh, I kind of like those, these bubbles. And it was also during the Debe, phase in the history. I mean, if you read the Machi sad memoirs, or Casanova’s memoirs or dangerous liaisons, all of that champagne was a tool to get into the pats of women, because there’s like a tool of their trade. So during the 18th century, it was the quans who were really the first champagne ambassadors. They introduced champagne to the courts and to anyone who visited the courts from other European aristocracies in the 19th century, during industrialization, you had a lot of widows VECO is the most famous, but you had V P you had Laja, you probably want, why are these votes? These widows and that’s because up until the 1950s and this, I fell off my chair, when I fell, found that out is that women could not, a single woman could not open her own business. she had to get her father’s consent to have a bank account and all of that. And so in the 19th century you had all these widows who took over their husband’s businesses with the exception of who waited till her husband wasn’t making champagne, but she created her champagne house after he died, because it was the only way she could have a business was as a widow.
Sharri Harmel: right. Isn’t that an amazing
Cynthia Coutu: And then in the 20th century, so, but a lot of widows really were responsible for some key innovations in champagne. The riling Picco is the riddling table vintage champagne. Jose, the way pink champagne is made today, mostly was her invention. Madam Pori up until her champagne was super, super sweet. Like dosed at about 150 to 200 grams. And it was served at dessert time. Like a lot of the Russians would serve it on the rocks and she wanted to please Verico sort of monopolize the whole Russian market and she, Madam come, he wanted to target the British market who had dryer taste. And so she developed a dry champagne, and it was thanks to her that you went from drinking a sweet dessert champagne after dinner for dinner. So a lot of these widows are behind some tea innovations then the 20th century, I mean, you had world war I, which was fought in champagne. And so the women were left to manage the champagne houses during very, very difficult World War II. A lot of them were involved in the resistance managing the champagne houses as well. And today you have several associations of women in champagne that get together to support each other. Anyways, I won’t get into the details, but we should all take the class
Sharri Harmel: Seriously.
Cynthia Coutu: But its women have basically played a very important role in champagne from, from the beginning until today.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. Yeah. How interesting though, to be in a, in a place where there’s the history. So you just talked about this long history of the development and the changes within the champagne industry, which, you know, a new country such as America doesn’t have. We don’t, we don’t have history like that. So everyone has to sign up for that class. I know. I want to run it again. Is it, is it going on right now?
Cynthia Coutu: Well, I think revenge travel is a thing. I’m just coming up for air now in August, but May, June, and July, I was in champagne like three, four times a week.
Sharri Harmel: When you say revenge travel, what do you mean?
Cynthia Coutu: Well, a lot of people were cooped up during the pandemic and want to go to all the places on their bucket list.
And so a lot of people wanna go to champagne yes and so there’s only 24 hours in a day and I basically wasn’t offering any webinars during the summer. I’ll probably get back into it in, maybe not September, but at some point, in September, I’ll start doing hosting. I do one the bubbly bad asses once a year or no, no, no, I do them on a regular basis, but if anyone’s like super interested, they can purchase the last recording that’s for 30 euros. You get the PDF and the recording, but I will be hosting some more live sessions in the fall once you can breathe. Yeah, so there’s the bubbly bad asses, champagne and food pairing.
Sharri Harmel: Okay and that can be taken online, is that right?
Cynthia Coutu: Yeah. It’s a zoom.
Sharri Harmel: Perfect. And then if there’s anyone who wants to go to Paris or to France, and hasn’t already done their revenge travel, so to speak, I’ve heard this from everyone in Paris. And actually, even when I left, which was middle of June, I noticed the same thing. It was like, oh my God, where did everyone come from? Cause the Parisians are all at that point. The Parisians were gone if they could be but if anyone is interested, you also then going forward do these, the tours and some of these particular private workshops and whatnot that I see behind you.
Cynthia Coutu: Yes, I’ve got bookings already going to December.
Sharri Harmel: Is there a good time though, to do the tours is when’s the best time?
Cynthia Coutu: So that’s another, I forgot about that webinar. I do one that’s called Champagne Dreams and it’s for people who can’t afford to book me as a guide, I give the milestones in history and geography, how to get around and my favorite places to visit. And one of the things I talk about is the best time to go but it’s basically anytime from April to end of October. I try to discourage people from going November, December, January, February, cuz it’s just so depressing and champagne it’s bleak, you know, there’s no, no, no leaves on the vines and it can be rainy, rainy, cold. And it’s not as much fun as my favorite time is during harvest, which is when the dates change every year because it depends on the climate this year. It’s basically the first week of September, which is too late for anyone now if they happen to book but I do special excursions during Harvey.
Sharri Harmel: How fun, how incredibly fun. Well, in closing, if you were to have a dinner party and you were going to invite some guests, and obviously the dinner party would, you’d be serving champagne. Who would you want to invite past or present? You know, it could be somebody who’s no longer here.
Cynthia Coutu: So I’m a Gemini. Very curious, I know that the queen of England likes to have a glass of champagne before bed, so she would be someone I would love to have at my table because I’m sure she’d have so well, I don’t know if she’d spill the tea or not. Yeah. but I would certainly try to get it outta her. I think it would be a mix of women from different walks of life. And different ages. That and the queen would preside.
Sharri Harmel: Yes, of course. And you would be serving her ma’am right. yes. Ma’am so they say how fun I would love to be at that dinner party.
Well, even if it’s just you and the queen, I will serve. So she’s one of my favorites actually. You talk about a woman who’s accomplished a lot and was a head of something long before women ever thought of running countries, let alone businesses, you know, so anyways, well, Cynthia, thank you so much for the conversation today.
And we have to have you back on at some point in the future. I hope you’re willing to come back and share what’s new because we just got started. I feel like we just touch the surface of women and champagne.
Cynthia Coutu: We could have several podcasts.
Sharri Harmel: Exactly. But thank you. Thank you so much. And my pleasure. Good. And all of Cynthia’s information and some of the information that she shared in our conversation today, we’ll show up in the show notes below. So take care of everyone.
Sharri Harmel: Well, a conversation with an extraordinary woman, a glass of champagne and a visit by an adorable cat life. Doesn’t get much better. Does it truly the CHIO we all crave. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Cynthia and remember all the information you need to continue. Your champagne journey with Delectabulles is down in the show notes.
If you liked this podcast and want to see more about the extraordinary omen offerings, just go to extraordinary women magazine.com. Some fabulous new announcements are happening soon. So sign up on the website to hear. All for now. Stay safe. Be happy. A bientot.
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