23. The Champagne house Pommery was made famous by Alexandre Louis Pommery's widow. Louis, who died in 1858, had a job quite different from making champagne. What was his job?
From Quiz Discombobulating Bubbles!
Answer:
Wool merchant
The history of champagne house Pommery indicates two different dates of establishment: 1836 and 1858. How does one explain this peculiar fact? Well, the company was created in 1836 by Narcisse Greno (1810-1893), a young wine maker who retired in 1856 in favour of the Pommery couple. Greno continued to work for the champagne house, but only in a marketing role.
Alexandre Louis Pommery (1811-1858), aka Louis Pommery, was in fact a wool merchant, and even after joining the Greno company (which was then renamed "Pommery & Greno"), he did not meddle in the champagne production. It is only after Louis-Alexandre died, that his wife Jeanne Alexandrine Louise Pommery, née Melin (1819-1890) took control of the champagne house, which then dropped the name Greno.
Jeanne Pommery bought 50 hectare (123.55 acres) of fine land in 1868, and had dug 18 km (11 miles) of cellars under this tract of land. All these cellars were used to produce champagne, and Jeanne increased annual production from about 45,000 bottles (in 1836, the founding by Greno) to over 2,250,000 bottles at the year of her death.
The red herrings all refer to occupations that didn't even exist in 1858, the year when Louis-Alexandre died. The first car was made in the 1880's, the first plane flew in 1903, and although there were already similar devices, the first machine which we could name a computer was assembled in the twentieth century.