Sparkle Plenty

California sparkling wine is better than ever, but few people seem to be noticing.

Except for the few days before New Year’s Eve and the wedding month of June, sales of bubbly have been, well, flat since 1987. As a result, the wine market is glutted, making for the lowest prices in a decade.

The “suggested retail price” for most California sparkling wines is becoming all but meaningless. Example: Mumm “Cuvee Napa,” one of the best sparkling wines I’ve tasted in years, has a suggested price of $15, but most shops carry it for $11 and a few have it as low as $8.99.

Other sample prices: Domaine Chandon Brut has a suggested price of $11.95 (a dollar less than it was selling for a year ago), but it’s often found at $9. Korbel Brut has a suggested price of $11.95, but is often found at $7. Domaine Carneros and Roederer Estate both have suggested prices of $16 but often are found at $12.50. Most shops are passing along discounts this holiday season, creating other bargains, such as Gloria Ferrer Brut at $7.99 and Maison Deutz Brut at $7.99.

At prices like these, savvy wine buyers should stock up and use the bubbly as an elegant substitute for high-priced, usually too-oaky Chardonnay. Sparkling wine as good as this really works with a wide variety of foods.

The best bubbly news is its quality. Fifteen years ago, California sparkling winemakers tried to make wine with the aroma and taste of French Champagne. In practice, they developed only odd imitations, many of which were oxidized.

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By 1985, however, winemakers were getting a handle on how to use California wines’ greatest attribute--its fruit--and began to make a product that tasted like grapes, not toast. Instead of trying to emulate the French “yeasty” or “toasty” character, Californians were making wines of delicacy, with fruity nuances.

One reason for the better style of the wines was the arrival here of a number of French winemakers. Some worked for major wineries owned and operated by Champagne houses. Others were independent consultants from France who helped American-owned firms (such as Iron Horse, S. Anderson and Jordan) develop excellence in a New World style.

But despite the high quality of the wines, sales of all California sparkling wines are down 4% for the first three quarters of 1993. The only good news is that sales of premium bubbly (made by the French methode champenoise ) increased 6% (37,000 cases) through September, according to the figures of Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates, the San Francisco firm that charts wine sales data.

But even that statistic is misleading. For one thing, Sebastiani Vineyards has stopped making sparkling wine and is closing out all inventory, accounting for an estimated 7,000 additional cases in the market at close-out prices. (One Northern California chain of grocery stores is carrying it for $3.99 a bottle.)

Everywhere there are signs that California’s sparkling wine industry is in the doldrums:

* Korbel--the national leader in premium sparkling wine, selling more than 900,000 cases a year--developed a lower-priced line of wines called Armstrong Ridge with a target price of $6.99.

* Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley, which normally makes about 400,000 cases of sparkling wine per year, made just 185,000 cases in 1993, preferring to sell inventory from past years. (Hardly any of Domaine Chandon’s products are vintage-dated, so the wine you’re buying today may be benefiting from another year of aging on the yeast--actually making it a better wine).

* Piper-Sonoma switched from vintage sparkling wine production to non-vintage and then cut production drastically because of excess inventory. That left the winery without the need for winemaker Chris Markell, who resigned.

* Chateau St. Jean, which has been making about 40,000 cases of premium bubbly a year for more than a decade, is seeking a smaller production facility than the huge facility it currently leases in Graton, in western Sonoma County. “We don’t see (sparkling wine) as a growth area,” says a winery spokesman.

* Wente Bros. in Livermore, which has cut way back on production of bubbly over the last two years, will open its sparkling wine facility to custom-crush for accounts who want to make sparkling wine but have no facilities.

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Meanwhile, a number of European-owned wineries are producing far less than they might. One insider estimates that at least three--Domaine Carneros (Taittinger of France), Codorniu Napa (Codorniu of Spain), Gloria Ferrer (Freixenet of Spain)--are operating at less than half-capacity.

“No rational business person would have built these edifices this large had they known sales would be so slow,” the source says.

Gloria Ferrer’s large facility in Sonoma was so underused that winemaker Bob Iantosca began making table wines. (His Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, both $15, are excellent.)

Overall, California premium sparkling wine sales this year are estimated to reach 2.2 million cases, up 3% from 1992. However, gross sales in dollars are still down. One winery executive estimated that all sparkling wineries’ gross sales would decline by a cumulative $10 million because of shrinking FOB prices.

And things may get worse for sparkling producers. Current 1993 sales figures don’t list about 40,000 cases of inventory from Hanns Kornell Champagne Cellar, which went out of business earlier this year. The only thing this wine does is offer the consumer additional cheap bubbly to compete with existing, ongoing brands.

(Under new owner Koerner Rombauer, who bought the Kornell winery, Kornell produced 15,000 cases of Brut, Blanc de Noirs and Extra Dry that will be released early next year.)

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Even those in the bubbly business admit it’s a bizarre way to try to make a buck.

David Fredrickson, vice president of marketing and sales for Korbel, says that “the higher quality of sparkling wine combined with lower prices should make California sparkling wine a beverage that is consumed more regularly. But it’s in the public’s mind that (sparkling wine) is a celebration drink, and with the economy the way it has been, people haven’t had a lot to celebrate in the last few years. A heavy user drinks maybe three bottles a year.”

“This is an irrational category,” says John Martini, vice president for marketing and sales for Domaine Chandon. “We have too many producers (in California) and too many labels in a relatively small category who have produced too much wine for what the market is buying.”