A Canadian in Paris is championing women in the storied business of Champagne
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Canadian wine educator Cynthia Coutu's wine epiphany happened on a fly-fishing trip a couple decades ago in Northern Quebec.
At the time, she was working on a master's degree in art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, and once a week she would buy a bottle from a shop in her neighbourhood.
When she mentioned she wanted to take a special bottle or two back to Canada, the caviste, the wine shop owner, had some suggestions.
They went into his cellar and began searching his cellar for something that would fit her budget, which wasn't massive – 400 francs, roughly $135 – but was more than she'd ever spent on a bottle.
'He suggested a Cheval Blanc from 1982 and a Haut-Brion, also from 1982, I think,' Coutu says. In the end, she took both.
Of course, she had to give him a full report on her experience when she returned to Paris. 'We had a five-hour drive to the north of Quebec, another hour on a dirt road and three different portages to get to the cabin, but the bottles arrived safely and I left them to sit,' she says.
'A few days later, we were happily fishing and caught lots of trout. We got back to the cabin, fried the trout in some nice Canadian bacon and decided now's the time to open those bottles.'
As she began sipping one of the legendary red Bordeaux, the night sky exploded with the northern lights. 'We were just silent, sitting there, watching this incredible light show and drinking this awesome wine,' she says.
'That's when I knew what the fuss about wine was all about.'
Coutu is now the award-winning founder and owner ('chief bubbly officer,' she likes to say) of Delectabulles, a Paris-based wine tourism business that introduces wine lovers from around the world to the women of Champagne. She leads tastings in Paris, as well as one-day and multi-day tours to the famous French region, all with a distinctly female vibe.
'The focus on wine and the women in Champagne is necessary and long overdue,' says Coutu's friend Janet Dorozynski, a Canadian wine writer, judge and internationally renowned industry analyst.
'Her approach highlights the role of women in the industry. It is about visibility and representation, which is important.'
Coutu came up with the idea to host women-only tastings after a female winemaker told her that men at tastings often 'mansplain' how she'd made her own wine to her – the winemaker – while women often don't ask questions they would in all-female groups.
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'Women want to better understand what style of Champagne they prefer and why, which style to pair with what kind of food, and how to get the best bang for their buck,' Coutu says.
'They want to learn so they can empower themselves.'
This year, on the International Women's Day weekend, Coutu will lead a wine tasting and dinner at Bubble Bliss, a Champagne bar in the chic sixth arrondissement of Paris.
Owned by a woman, it opened in late 2024 and has quickly become one of Coutu's favourite stops for a glass and conversation with clients and friends.
Conversation that, inevitably, rolls around to what's in their glasses. According to Coutu, 70 per cent of Champagne is bought by women.
But only 20 per cent of the big Champagne houses, also called Grandes Marques, have a female CEO and only 17 per cent have a female cellar master. 'On the other end of the spectrum, 40 per cent of the small independent grower Champagne estates are owned by women. The bigger the house, the less parity,' Coutu explains.
Climbing the wine industry ranks isn't without challenges, something she knows first-hand. 'I struggled as a Canadian woman in the wine world, and in France, it was a double-whammy – not just being a woman, but being a foreign woman, too,' Coutu says.
A few years ago, she was the only woman on a panel of six judges tasting wine at the Concours Général Agricole, France's oldest food and wine competition. A male judge pointed out that as a Canadian, she must have grown up on maple syrup, then questioned how she'd have the skills to judge Champagnes.
He wasn't kidding.
Later, at the same competition, she found herself defending a wine she believed deserved a medal. The president of the jury told her, after putting his hand on her shoulder, he'd let her have the medal, but only because of her beautiful blue eyes.
'That's a reason why I started seeking out other women in wine.'
Coutu's journey toward becoming chief bubbly officer, wasn't intentional. Born near Montreal to a Cape Bretoner and a Mountie, she lived in Nova Scotia and Ottawa as a child. After earning a fine arts degree from the University of Ottawa, she moved to Paris. Realizing she didn't want to work in art for the rest of her life, she got a job at the Canadian embassy in Paris. She eventually moved to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
When she was 50, her position was eliminated after a reorganization. A return to Canada was in the cards. Or was it? 'I like wine and cheese too much. I had to figure out a way to stay in Paris,' she says with a laugh.
Over the years, she had learned a lot about wine: formal classes with Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), her wine shop friend, winemakers' tastings and dinners.
'I decided to specialize in sparkling wines as an intellectual challenge, and Champagne is the most complex of all the sparkling wines,' she says.
'What I really like is the diversity: It's a blend of great varieties, plots, villages, years.'
Yet, for Coutu, the best part of wine isn't about technical details such as soil types and grape clones. 'It's who you are drinking with, where you are and what you're eating,' Coutu says.
'It's about creating these magical, precious moments.'
And while there were many businesses that offered tastings and tours to French wine regions, no one focused on the history of women in wine – Champagne in particular. 'The more I started learning about Champagne, the more I realized the important role that women have played in the region and its wines,' Coutu says.
'From Joan of Arc – who led the charge to liberate the region of Champagne from the English during the Hundred Years' War and burned at the stake for dressing like a man – to the women of Champagne today, the one constant is how fearless they are and how resilient.'
It will come as no surprise to hear Coutu is now working on a book. Bubbly Badasses is the working title and there are plenty of women to feature. Vitalie Taittinger heads up Taittinger and Alexandra Pereyre de Nonancourt and her sister Stéphanie Meneux de Nonancourt are the co-CEOs of Laurent-Perrier. Duval-Leroy, Gosset, Henriot, Krug and Perrier-Jouët all have female cellar masters (or cheffes de cave in French). And Tarlant, a small estate that goes back 10 generations, has a brother-sister team at the helm; Melanie Tarlant is the sister. Of note, Tarlant and Taittinger are part of La Transmission – Femmes en Champagne, an association created to support women in Champagne.
Preceding their collective success is Madame Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, better known as the Widow Clicquot of the legendary Veuve Clicquot Champagne house. When widowed at the age of 27, she took over her husband's business in 1805, creating rosé Champagne and one of the first vintage Champagnes. Her many accomplishments are still part of the business today.
'There are so many stories,' Coutu says.
'When I die, it'll be on my tombstone: Still learning about Champagne.'
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