Moët & Chandon let an invading army drink its cellars dry.
In 1814, after Napoleon’s defeat, Russian troops camped at the house in Épernay and emptied more than 600,000 bottles, the worst plundering in Champagne. Jean-Rémy Moët, Napoleon’s friend, let them drink. “They will be hooked for life and become my best salesmen when they go back to their own country,” he said. The Duke of Wellington, Prussia’s king and Tsar Alexander I later came to buy.
Moët & Chandon on Brandseum