Big Boom in Champagne

Prices are up, but so is consumption in the fizz biz

From time immemorial, champagne has been the ambrosia of New Year's and nuptials, ship launchings and seductions. In recent years, all this has changed. Champagne has become a drink for all occasions and is now quaffed in such Jeroboam quantities that the fizz biz poppeth over. The thirst for authentic French bubbly, plus the grievous crop damage to French vines in three of the past four years, has raised prices for the real stuff* and has forced French shippers to ration the choice vintages. At Manhattan's elegant Four Seasons restaurant, for instance, a bottle of Henriot Reserve Phillippe de Rothschild 1975 now costs $110. Five years ago, a comparable bottle sold for about $60. At Jacqueline's Champagne & Wine Bar in Manhattan, a fluted glass of champagne costs $5.50. Some bars also serve pricey champagne cocktails, such as Kir Royal (with cassis) and Mimosa (with orange juice).

Americans, at least, will suffer no shortage of the sparkling wine. Given the large acreage suitable for chardonnay and the other grapes used for bubbly and no legal prohibitions against calling their product champagne, U.S. wine makers, mostly in California, have for many years been producing sparkling wines that compare well with some of the good French vintages; some are made by the French methode champenoise. Last October, for example, Sonoma County's venerable F. Korbel & Bros, introduced a dry, delicate, straw-colored Blanc de Blancs that drew critical raves at blind tastings. It costs around $16--no steal, but less than the price of a comparable imported bottle.

California wine makers shipped some 22 million gal. of bubbly in 1980, up a cork-busting 52% over the 1970 level. French champagne makers in 1981 shipped to the U.S. more than twice as much as in 1971. The lesson was not lost on the French. Moet-Hennessy, a Paris-based conglomerate that is France's biggest champagne exporter to the U.S., bought 1,500 Napa Valley acres in 1973. Its Domaine Chandon in 1981 captured an estimated 25% of the market for sparkling wine made by the French method. The company, whose bubbly retails for about $12 a bottle (vs. around $24 for imported Moet & Chandon), plans to produce 5 million bottles annually. By comparison, its parent, Moet-Hennessy, shipped 2.6 million bottles to the U.S. in 1981. Another French firm, Piper-Heid-sieck, has started a California winery with Sonoma Vineyards and will release its first wines in late 1982.

To some oenophiles, champagne seems a frivolous drink, a pleasant aperitif but unsuitable for consumption throughout a meal. Says Humorist Art Buchwald: "It tastes as though my foot's asleep." Yet, inevitably, the noble, pale gold fluid, its nose-wrinkling bubbles and the sense of care and occasion that accompanies it will always make the wine more of a celebration than a tipple. As they say in the Napa Valley these days, Sante! Bonne annee!

* In Europe, the only wine that legally may be called champagne is made from specified grape varieties grown mostly (42,000 acres) in the Marne and prepared according to a rigorous vinification process, in which the wine is fermented a second time in the bottle.

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