The Corks Are Apoppin'

By Stephen Koepp

For wine makers, everything that sparkles is gold

Clink, clink, clink. My fellow champagne makers, may I have your attention? Let us raise our glasses to 1984, the best year in our history, and to the U.S. consumer, who has developed a passion for our product! Our noble wine has now become mother's milk for yuppies.

If the makers of champagne and its fizz-alikes were to assemble for a party this week, it would be a frothy scene indeed. Their business is enjoying cork-popping growth at a time when liquor, beer and table wines have sluggish or declining revenues. Sparkling-wine sales have bubbled up to $1.7 billion this year, 34% more than in 1983. Exports of French champagne to the U.S. this year grew at the same effervescent pace and exceeded 1 million cases for the first time. With New Year's Eve approaching, France's Moet-Hennessy two weeks ago flew an additional 24,000 bottles of its prestige brand Dom Perignon (retail price: about $40) to New York City. "Business has always been good, but lately it is exploding," says Gary Heck, chairman of California's F. Korbel & Bros., an industry leader. "Americans are all buying bubbles."

No one has benefited more than the French from the new thirst for chic sparklers. Genuine champagne comes only from grapes grown on 70,000 acres of chalky soil near Reims, France. It was there that Dom Perignon, a 17th century Benedictine monk, perfected the slow, expensive methode champenoise that creates the carbon-dioxide fizz by fermenting wine a second time inside the bottle. Until a few years ago, U.S. consumers regarded France's pricey bubbly as an indulgence reserved for weddings, New Year's Eve parties and World Series locker rooms. But the current strength of the dollar has brought French brands within easier reach of the average American. Mumm's Cordon Rouge and Perrier-Jouet's Grand Brut, both priced at about $20 two years ago, now sell in the U.S. for as little as $13.

Wine makers across Europe and America are helping to quench demand for the real thing by duplicating la methode champenoise. Two Spanish brands, Freixenet and Codorniu, have been produced according to the French technique since the 19th century. Freixenet's Cordon Negro, known for its distinctive black bottle, and Codorniu's Brut Classico both sell for about $6, yet critics have compared them favorably with French brands costing twice as much. Freixenet's shipments to the U.S. have grown from 540,000 bottles in 1979 to an estimated 9 million this year.

Since the American still-wine business has gone flat in recent years, American wine makers have rushed into the fizz biz. Recent entries include Sebastiani and Iron Horse. The U.S. now has more than 100 brands of domestic sparkling wine, up from 56 in 1979. Schramsberg, the highly regarded Napa Valley brand that President Reagan served last spring at an official dinner in China, expects to sell some 28,000 cases of sparkling wine in 1984, 17% more than last year. Two of France's leading champagne producers, Moet-Hennessy and Piper-Heidsieck, have established wineries in California, where they turn out well-regarded products priced in the $8-to-$10 range.

The quintessential sparkling-wine buyer is not some character out of Dynasty but the status-seeking baby boomer. Says Clint Rodenberg, marketing vice president for Schieffelin, the U.S. importer of Moet &Chandon:

"The yuppies are bored with white wine as a cocktail. They grew up on carbonated beverages, so it is not surprising they have developed a taste for the bubbly." Oakland Sculptor Ruth Boerefijn now sips champagne at least twice a month, compared with only twice annually in the past. Says she: "Pasta is out. Champagne is in. It's in the air." Linda Ondayko, a custom tailor in San Francisco, concurs: "My favorite wine always has bubbles in it. It implies festivity."

Savvy restaurateurs have boosted the trend by promoting champagne with breakfast and business lunches. Says Philippe Court, sales director of France's Taittinger brand: "People are beginning to realize that the best time to have champagne is at 10 in the morning, or as an aperitif, when the palate is still fresh." Meanwhile, the champagne-only bar has become one of the trendiest themes in the nightclub business. The two Nipper's discos in Beverly Hills and Santa Barbara, Calif., open a bottle every 45 seconds, serving 73 varieties of bubbly ranging in price from $3.75 for a glass of house champagne to $3,300 for a bottle of 1914 Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial. Nipper's is planning to open new champagne bars in Dallas, Chicago and New York City.

The sparkling-wine market in the U.S. should have plenty of growth yet to come. The French consume two bottles per person annually, while the British down one every five years. The laggard American still drinks an average of only one bottle every 20 years.

--By Stephen Koepp. Reported by Charles Pelton/San Francisco and Ellen Wallace/Paris

With reporting by Charles Pelton, Ellen Wallace