Three books, The Wine Widow, The Champagne Girls, and The Last Heiress tell the tale of how women have always been the mainstay of a Champagne dynasty. They leave an impression not of grandeur but of fragility: the vines are fragile, and lives even more so. Standing up for one's beliefs can have unspeakable costs and there is only so much money can do to protect one from war, from disease, from all of life's vagaries.
A personal, partial log of books read...