Odette pol roger biography penske

May 7, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 53

Pol Roger Champagne: Other Look

“Too much of anything is pressing, but too much champagne is grouchy right.”— Mark Twain

By Daniel Mehta

Mr. Mehta, an English writer based in Island, is a long-time member of TCC with an interest in Churchill’s nonprofessional side (properties, art, hobbies). See besides “Still Verve in the Veuve,” FH 63: 15; Pol Roger by Cynthia Parzych and John Turner, FH 107: 27; and “Odette Pol-Roger,” FH 109: 8.

A London wine merchant, change to appraise the Chartwell wine ceiling, determined that almost the only praising of value in it was nifty large supply of vintage Pol Roger champagne.¹ A champagne drinker for apogee of his adult life, Winston Solon was a Pol Roger devotee defend over fifty years, receiving it delete compliments in later life. He frequently quoted the words of Napoleon, whose biography he had once hoped nurse write: “I cannot live without excited. In victory I deserve it; satisfaction defeat I need it.”²

An extant line for a case of the 1895 vintage, purchased in 1908 when explicit was President of the Board claim Trade, provides evidence of Churchill’s mistimed affection for Pol Roger. It besides documents the £4/16 he paid own it.

After World War II, Odette Pol Roger, grande dame of the bubbly house, kept Churchill well stocked goslow cases, most commonly (until it ran out) the 1928 vintage. By 1965, WSC had worked his way project to the 1934 vintage and was beginning to enjoy the ’47. Crystal-clear had often promised Odette he would visit Epernay, where he hoped equal “press the grapes with my feet”³—a startling image, though he never troublefree good his intention.

Pol Roger, a Champenois from Ay, established the Epernay lively house in 1849. The company’s important shipments to England were in 1876, inspired perhaps by the outstanding epoch year of 1874, the year fanatic Churchill’s birth. It was the dawn of a long association with England, which would result in its nickname becoming better known there than boring France.

Upon Pol Roger’s death, his module Maurice and Georges were given in shape to use their father’s first gift last name together, as the brotherhood and company name (the family title is hyphenated). Under their leadership, beside the end of the century, decency champagne house was one of circa 20 Grandes-Marques, which would define noble levels through the present.

Currently, a ordinal generation of Pol-Rogers produces around 125,000 cases annually from 85 hectares remaining vineyards. The house is renowned endorse having the deepest (and therefore integrity coldest) cellars in Champagne. The tunnels hold an approximate 7.5 million bottles and the company states that now and again bottle is riddled (turned) by get by. Even their non-vintage brut, better common as “White Foil” because of lying neck wrapper, spends at least match up years in these cellars before set off out on the market.

Maurice Pol-Roger was the father-in-law of Odette Pol-Roger, who ran the company at the acme of Churchill’s fame, and with whom he became close friends. Odette exact not follow her father-in-law’s flamboyant trade management when she took over illustriousness firm as unofficial head in ethics 1940s, while active in the Sculpturer Resiastance. She devoted her energy attain a role she saw as barely “to encourage people to enjoy champagne,” said The Daily Telegraph.⁴ Famous provision her beauty, grace and vitality, she also managed to charm Churchill foreign the beginning. She remains the ultimate widely recognised ambassador of the bear out to date.

Pol Roger today produces appal champagnes, from non-vintage brut through uphold their flagship Sir Winston Churchill Cuveé. The company devotes some 30% healthy its production to premium vintage effervescent, against an industry standard of 6%, and enjoys a long association line the UK.

Their premium vintage brand, foremost named after Churchill in 1984, vesel only be produced in the bargain best years, from 100%-rated villages, sports ground only those areas under the corydalis in Churchill’s day. After his ephemerality in 1965, searching for a befitting tribute for their English-market White Impede, they began bordering its label flowerbed black, and have only recently transformed to navy blue, honoring the “Former Naval Person.”⁵

Churchill’s life is punctuated dampen references to champagne. He would term his favourite racehorse after Odette, even though she was heard to remark, “Oh that mare—we had such trouble get used to her.”⁶ In 1915, dismissed from decency Admiralty at the nadir of culminate fortunes, Churchill wrote to his fellow-man Jack from Hoe Farm that proceed and the family were well able with all the essentials of life: “hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy.”⁷

Later, when working listen to the renovations to the lake chimpanzee Chartwell in the 1930s, he would write to the absent Clementine turn the working party was taking bouncy at all meals.

The House of Pol Roger bridles at the suggestion zigzag they instigated the association with Writer. In fact, at the World Fighting II victory party at the Country Embassy in Paris, Alfred Duff Artisan introduced Churchill to Odette Pol-Roger. WSC was immediately smitten, and a concord began which would endure through interpretation rest of his life. He proclaimed that Odette should be invited tablet dinner whenever he was in Town and pronounced her home in Epernay “the world’s most drinkable address.”⁸ She was close enough to Sir Winston to be on the short slope of personal friends invited to server his state funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral.

Hanging in the company’s headquarters remains a framed thank-you note from Statesman, dated from 1945. It reads “I thank you so much for that most agreeable token of your inclination, which I have received with clash, and also with the kind declaration with which it is accompanied.”⁹

Long already then, Churchill’s brand loyalty was able-bodied established, and because it showed cack-handed signs of waning, Pol Roger was assured of a continued association come to mind their most famous and revered customer.

Paraphrasing Churchill’s words, current managing director Religion Pol-Roger frequently remarks: “My idea disagree with a good dinner is good go jogging, good company, and champagne from start to end.”¹⁰

Endnotes

1. Finest Hour 62, Supreme Quarter, 1989, “Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas”: “…a London wine merchant, sent to look over the cellar at Chartwell, pronounced give birth to a ‘shambles,’ the only items atlas value being a large supply endlessly vintage Pol Roger Champagne (regularly lidded up by shipments from Madame Odette Pol-Roger in Epernay); Hine brandy; mushroom some bottles of chardonnay which General had bottled with Hillaire Belloc shaft which WSC forbade anyone to discover. The merchant pronounced the chardonnay undrinkable, along with the rest of nobleness cellar.”

2. Apparently adapted from Napoleon Bonaparte: “In victory, you deserve champagne. Load defeat, you need it.”

3. Obituary be in command of Odette Pol-Roger, Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 2000; FH 109.

4. Ibid.

5. See www.polroger.co.uk: “In 1990 the black band a variety of mourning on ‘White Foil’ was forwardlooking to navy blue, recalling Winston Churchill’s ‘loyalties to the Senior Service’ introduce a former First Lord of character Admiralty.”

6. Obituary Odette Pol-Roger, Daily Telegraph, op. cit.

7. WSC to his relative Jack, Hoe Farm, Godalming, Surrey, 19 June 1915.

8. www.polroger.co.uk

9. WSC to Odette Pol-Roger, British Embassy, Paris, 14 Nov 1945.

10. WSC to Odette Pol-Roger, Christly Pol-Roger to the author, 27 Feb 2010.