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Instead of being intimidated, she applied the motto by which she
tries to live her life.
"You have to dare. When we dare, we manage to push open doors,"
she said.
Romelle, 42, is now running her own champagne label, in
partnership with a local vineyard, and says it is has found a
market among customers of Caribbean origin who want a brand that
reflects their connections with the region.
The brand is called Marie Cesaire, a portmanteau of the names of
her mother and father. In a nod to the Caribbean, the label on
the bottle carries an image of a hummingbird and the drink is
sweetened with raw cane sugar.
To the best of her knowledge, she is the only Black producer of
champagne, a strictly regulated designation that is reserved
exclusively for people making the sparkling wine in the
Champagne region of northeast France.
When Romelle was 3 years old, she and her family moved from
Guadeloupe to a Paris suburb.
Her father died when she was 9. She left school at 16 to support
her family. She developed a passion for champagne when she
worked as a sales assistant in an airport delicatessen near
Paris.
Years later in 2015, after jobs managing stores, working as a
bank asset manager and studying for a business degree, she moved
to the champagne region and launched her brand.
She said she hoped to blaze a trail for other people from ethnic
minority groups.
"We have to stop building barriers and telling ourselves that 'I
can't do this or that'," she said.
"I hope that tomorrow, someone will identify with me, and that I
will make an impact on them, that they will dare to do things
they didn't dare to before."
(Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
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