Prosecco Bursting the Champagne Bubble
The holidays: the most won-der-ful time of the year, when delusional notions and cynical lies issue forth with every single "Season's Greetings" email individuals even tangentially involved in sales send out.
In luxury markets like wine, the creative duplicity reaches cartoonish levels. In a desperate bid to boost end-of-year sales numbers for under-performing producers, wine pros work feverishly, bombarding writers with dubious claims about obscure and unpopular grape varietals. They present various wild conclusions based on "facts," AKA posts from Instagram influencers and thinly supported data that, they say, point to the sudden wild popularity of said obscure and unpopular varietal with "the Millennials". (Some rather churlish writers and editors would even say marketers are likely funding many of these posts and studies).
The all-powerful Millennials are viewed by marketers, producers and wine sellers alike with the same quaking fear and respect that Greek peasants pictured Zeus and his merry band of pranksters circa the 5th Century BCE. They're capricious, mysterious and can make or break a brand, a restaurant or a store with their potent blend of Snapchatting, Instagramming panache and complete lack of good ol' fashioned brand loyalty.
Around the holidays, the wine sales pitch tends to center on bubbles. Will Champagne finally be unseated from its throne, sparkling producers, marketers, buyers (and writers) fret? This year, the headlines are dominated by claims that Sekt, Pet-Nat are due for a major resurgence.
Not that anyone's necessarily paying attention.
"We are all increasingly aware that many things we read online these days are driven by money, namely a publishers' need to attract eyeballs," notes trends expert Daniel Levine.
Could a relatively obscure and newfangled fizz like Sekt, Pet-Nat or Franciacorta really and truly rival the King of Plonk, or has the bubbly gone to everyone's heads? We took a hard look at the data and talked to industry gurus for their perspective to find out.
First, the numbers
When news broke that Champagne sales fizzled in the UK last year (a nation of notorious French-focused bubble guzzlers), many in the industry panicked. A drop of 8.68 percent in volume, and 14.03 percent in value felt apocalyptic. They weren't giving up their bubbles, of course: instead, they're turning to the cheaper Prosecco (just $13.50 – $16 for DOC) and, to a lesser extent, Cava to meet their plonk needs, with Prosecco sales spiking 50 percent in volume and 53 percent in value last year.
But in the US, Total Wine – the largest independent retailer of fine wine in the US, with 193 superstores in 23 states – says consumers are still guzzling Champagne. The top two spots on their Top 10 sales list belong to Mailly Brut Reserve and Pertois Moriset Cuvee. No. 3 goes to Prosecco (Santi Nello), and No. 4 to Cava (Rondel Brut), followed by two Rosés from the Champagne region.
Minibar Delivery, which partners with local stores to deliver "take-out" drink orders in 16 states, meanwhile, wouldn't share the size of their company and reach with us, but they let us look at their internal data on year-over-year sparkling wine sales numbers. The data show a small but significant downturn in Champers, even though it still dominates sales.
In 2018 (YTD), Champagne comprised 37 percent of their total sparkling wine sales (down from 42 percent last year); Prosecco 28 percent (up from 24 percent last year); Rosé 13 percent (down from 14 percent last year), Cava 5 percent (down from 6 percent last year), and Lambrusco and Asti held steady, with 1 percent and 0.22 percent of the sales share respectively.
The remaining sparkling wines sold (about 16 percent this year, 14 percent last year) were not tracked by category by the company. The price breakdown was notable too, and hinted at an uptick in alt bubbles: 81 percent of spend YTD was in the under $25 category (up from 78 percent last year); 9 percent was in the $26-$50 category (holding steady); 9 percent was in the $51-$100 category (down from 12 percent); 0.5 percent was in the $101-$200 (holding steady) and 0.13 percent was in the $201+ (down from 0.22 percent).
According to our numbers at Wine-Searcher, Champagne may not be what people buy, but it's what they want.
Every day, we process more than 1 million searchers, and last month, listed by rank Champagne's Dom Perignon Brut was still the top-searched for bubbly (No. 5 on the list overall). Next was Louis Roederer Cristal Brute Millesime from Champagne (No. 17 overall). There was a bubbly Rosé on there, but it hailed from Champagne. (Dom Perignon, No. 97 overall). Furthermore, last year's Champagne sales broke records. Comité Champagne sales soared to $6 billion in 2017, breaking a record set in 2015. Export sales were brisk: just short of 50 percent of the total production, and while sales slumped 11 percent in the UK, Japan and China more than picked up the slack.
Can we trust the numbers? Mark Twain (quoting, he said, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, though historians have been unable to trace the phrase back to him) popularized the notion that "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." In other words, fake news. We turned to trend analysts and industry gurus to find out if they think these stats on bubbles are full of hot air.
Now, perspective
Like the data we've found at Wine-Searcher, some say that while people may not be willing to spend triple digits on the fancy stuff every day, they'll invest for major occasions when they want to show off (like … the holidays).
"Champagne is definitely losing category share to Prosecco and other sparkling wines in terms of our sales," says Lindsey Andrews, co-founder of Minibar. "However, Veuve Clicquot still remains our top product in the wine category, throughout the year. Customers are willing to spend extra money, because it's such a well-known brand."
Champagne isn't going anywhere, agrees Josh Lit, wine director at New York City's Gotham Bar and Grill. He took over as wine director seven months ago, after working in sales for Kobrand and as a sommelier at The Modern. But while Champagne isn't moving out, other bubbles are occupying more real estate in his wine cellar, supplanting other, slower-moving, less-exciting stills.
"When I arrived, I definitely ramped up the sparkling wine section of the menu," Lit says. "Champagne, primarily grower Champagne, still comprises the vast majority of our sparkling wine sales, but guests are more and more open to trying other bubbles, especially ones that are similar in taste and grown in the same way, such as English sparkling wines."
And yes, there will (soon) be Sekt on the menu. "We're bringing in two German Sekts, and they'll make it on the menu in the next few weeks," he says, adding that sommeliers are already offering a Franciacorta "by the glass."
But what he's most excited by is Pet-Nat. "In addition to beefing up the bubbles section of the menu, I also built a natural wine section," he says. "Younger people don't necessarily have the budget to spend $200 on a bottle at dinner, but they want something exciting that feels celebratory. That's where Pet-Nat comes in for us."
He credits the perception of sparkling wine changing because of (you guessed it), social media. "Mega-influencers like Action Bronson have opened up a lot of eyes, and younger people are clamoring for Pet-Nat," he says. "In eight to 10 years, I see it occupying its own section of wine menus."
Oui, oui, motherfuckers, as Mr. Wonderful himself likes to say.
India Hynes, CEO vinotemp.com, agrees that social media has changed the game, and says Instagram, not critics, headline-writers or marketers, are driving trends. "Consumers are setting the wine trends before producers or anyone else even know what's happening," she says. "Modern and younger wine drinkers are more interested in the bottle of wine their friends just posted on social media rather than what experts say."
Sommer Walker, general manager of brand development agency RWT Marketing, also insists that Millennials will unseat Champagne in favor of cheaper, more Insta-friendly options – though she doesn't foresee a left-field sparkler like Sekt or Pet-Nat going mainstream anytime soon. A glance at trending bubble hashtags on Instagram is instructive. Champagne's on top with 11.79 million, Prosecco boasts 2.82 million, Cava has around 787K, Franciacorta has been tagged 345K times, while Sekt has been blasted 221K times and PetNat trails with 24K.
"Our internal numbers show that rosé sales in general have spiked 69 percent year-over-year and that bubbly rosé has grown 100 percent," she says. "Millennials are driving the sparkling category now, and they're more experimental, but they don't necessarily want something completely unfamiliar just because a magazine is pushing it."
She points to brands like Domaine Bousquet (who, it should be noted, is one of their clients, horse in the race, etc.) as being the "future" leaders of the sparkling category. Made in Tupungato, the northernmost sub-region of the Uco Valley in Mendoza, it harbors a promising, but relatively unexplored wine terroir that translates to cheaper real estate and lower production costs – and therefore products – even when wines are made in the traditional Champagne method, as Domaine Bousquet does.
"Their Rosé Brut is organic, it has a 90-point rating from James Suckling, it's sparkling and it's relatively inexpensive," Walker says. (It retails for around $12.99) "We're also seeing a lot of growth among American, Italian and Argentinian producers."
Levine concurs, observing that "sparkling wine consumption is growing by double digits, and most of the growth is happening in the 'sub-Champagne' categories."
Tough to remember those days, but try for a sec to recall the days when Prosecco was a scrappy underdog scoffed at by sommeliers and critics. It was cheaper, somewhat predictable, more floral and fruit forward, with softer bubbles, they argued. And consumers rejoined, well yes. That's the point.
While many still posit that Prosecco is boring and one-dimensional, no one can question the impressiveness of its stupendous rise. Will it – and Champagne – fall on Pet-Nat's funky sword? For the foreseeable, even with Mr. Wonderful's blessing, non non. Instead, all signs point to all manners of bubbles just taking up ever-increasing room in everyone's general wine diet.
"Our sales of sparkling wine are increasingly steady year-round," Lit says. "I definitely want them around the holidays, but there's nothing more delicious and thirst-quenching than a Pet-Nat or a Rosé Brut after a long week at work. Our sales reflect that."
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