Word: wined
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...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 Moët-Hennessy two weeks...
...chic sparklers. Genuine champagne comes only from grapes grown on 70,000 acres of chalky soil near Reims, France. It was there that Dom Pérignon, a 17th century Benedictine monk, perfected the slow, expensive méthode 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...
...Wine makers across Europe and America are helping to quench demand for the real thing by duplicating la méthode 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, Moët-Hennessy and Piper-Heidsieck, have established wineries...