Odette Pol-Roger

Odette Wallace, champagne producer: born Paris February 1911; married 1933 Jacques Pol-Roger (died 1964); died Paris 25 December 2000.

Odette Wallace, champagne producer: born Paris February 1911; married 1933 Jacques Pol-Roger (died 1964); died Paris 25 December 2000.

Odette Pol-Roger was more, far more, than a society beauty, a flirtatious friend of Sir Winston Churchill in his old age, let alone a "champagne blonde", as she was once labelled. She was a gutsy lady who greatly helped the family champagne firm of Pol Roger into which she married to be one of the few to survive; she played an active role in the Resistance; and she was for a quarter of a century the much-loved president of the gardening society of Epernay, the French town where her husband's firm was located - at her funeral her coffin was strewn with her favourite flowers, all white, above all white cyclamen.

Her loves in life, she said, apart from her many friends, "were to garden, to go trout fishing and to decorate my houses" - in Normandy and in Epernay, as well as her apartment in Paris - all in a charmingly eclectic style, adorned with an important collection of Meissen china. Not surprisingly she was famous for her sense of style, but also for her joie de vivre and, above all, her energy: one well-known story relates how she once drove from Paris to Normandy after a particularly good party - at the British Embassy - arriving at her house at dawn. From her bedroom she spotted a huge trout in the stream which ran through the park, dashed down with her rod and, arrayed only in a dressing gown, caught the fish.

She was born, if not to the aristocratic purple, into a natural place in the highest of Paris society as the great-granddaughter of Sir Richard Wallace, the great connoisseur whose art collection had been bequeathed to Britain in 1897. She was one of three sparky, beautiful daughters of a distinguished soldier, General George Wallace, a trio known, inevitably and to their natural irritation, as the Wallace Collection (Odette remained a trustee of the collection in London until a very advanced age).

She met Jacques Pol-Roger, the grandson of the founder and later one of the three members of the family who ran the firm, when her father was stationed in Epernay and married him in 1933. She got on particularly well with her father-in-law Maurice, a formidable character who had become a local hero in 1914 when, as Mayor of Epernay, he had stood up against the Germans during a (fortunately very short) occupation of the town. After her marriage she found no difficulty in combining her life style with selling her husband's champagne: "Whoever has never loved champagne," she declared, "has never loved life as much as I have."

"In my youth," she told me, "the smart champagnes in Paris were Pommery and Clicquot. I set about getting Pol Roger in there" - friends whose daughters were going to be married found that she would combine a sales pitch with her congratulations.

During the Second World War the family spent a great deal of time, trouble and money providing the necessities of life to the poor of Epernay and, where possible, to prisoners of war as well. The family also helped the Resistance, and not only financially - Odette Pol-Roger herself helped by going on 12-hour cycling trips to Paris to carry messages (she was once arrested by the Gestapo, not surprisingly since she was wearing an RAF badge on her dress at the time, and was questioned for several hours).

After her husband's death in 1964 she continued to be involved in Pol Roger's marketing activities but devoted more and more time to gardening. For over a quarter of a century she presided over Epernay's decidedly unaristocratic horticultural society. Her activities received official recognition in both France and Belgium and heartfelt tributes from local gardeners.

Towards the end of the war she had met the triumphant Sir Winston Churchill (typically at a party at the British Embassy when Duff and Lady Diana Cooper were in residence). They immediately fell for each other - and by no means only because champagne had always been his favourite drink. She said that she was conquered by "his thoughtfulness, his courtesy and his good manners" while for Churchill the harmlessly flirtatious friendship with this beautiful French lady (helped, as Bill Gunn of Pol Roger puts it, by the fact that she "spoke impeccable English with a beguiling French accent deployed to great effect") cheered the last, often miserable, 20 years of his life.

On her part the friendship involved regular shipments of his favourite vintages (starting with the 1928 and, when that ran out, the 1934, which lasted until Churchill's death). In return Churchill sent her a copy of his memoirs inscribed, "Cuvée de Réserve. Mise en bouteille au Château Chartwell". More originally he also named a racehorse Pol-Roger. The animal distinguished itself by winning a race on the very day of the Queen's Coronation. Nevertheless Odette was ungrateful for the gesture: "Oh, that mare," she remarked, "we had such trouble with her."

She extracted some extraordinary statements from the old man. When she said that the French Revolution was not the period of French history of which she was the proudest he replied, "It was a period of great generosity thanks to your young people who abolished historic privileges", adding, "I do not like privileges but I detest equality."

Odette Pol-Roger had been one of the very few personal friends of the Churchill family invited to Sir Winston's funeral. In his memory her firm decorated all the bottles they exported to Britain with a black border. In 1984 they introduced a de luxe champagne named after him and originally sold only to the Churchills and the Royal Family. The champagne was deliberately blended in the sturdy, fruity, rather old-fashioned style which Churchill loved.

The cuvée, one of the most distinguished on the market, is still sold only when it is more mature than the "ordinary" vintage Pol Roger and remains a deeply satisfying memorial to a remarkable relationship.