By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lily Bollinger had already conquered the American market and secured the coveted Royal Warrant. She was the undisputed “Grand Dame” of Aÿ, a woman who had steered her champagne house through the darkest days of the Nazi occupation with little more than a bicycle, a prayer, and a resolve made of tempered steel. But the world was changing. The era of stiff, post-war tradition was giving way to the high-octane, jet-set glamour of the 1960s. The bubbles were shifting, and Lily knew that to remain the “toast of London,” she had to find a way to stay three steps ahead of the curve.

Her nephew, Christian Bizot, came to her with a vision that sounded, in Lily’s own sharp-witted words, a bit “cockamamie.” He believed that the world’s most famous secret agent—the man every man wanted to be and every woman wanted to be with—should abandon his varied spirits and drink only one champagne: Bollinger. At the time, James Bond was a rising cinematic phenomenon, a symbol of modern masculinity and lethal sophistication. Christian saw the marketing potential, but Lily saw a strategic challenge that would define the future of her house.

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