Bubbly Is Still in Stock--but Hardly on Sale

There’s no shortage of champagne or sparkling wines for New Year’s revelers, but the bubbly is going to cost as much as 20% more.

“Over the last year, prices for champagne and sparkling wines have risen by 10% to 20%, mainly the result of media hype,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

Millions of bottles of champagne and sparkling wine will be consumed at New Year’s Eve celebrations worldwide, and a shortage “is not anticipated,” the department said in an import and export report.

Even so, Korbel Champagne Cellars in Guerneville, Calif., issued a statement Monday saying its cellars have been cleaned out.

“They actually shipped out their last case last weekend,” said Karley Sieden, a public relations spokeswoman in Chicago for Korbel. “Stores placed orders to Korbel, but the stores still have a lot in stock.”

Korbel, a unit of Brown-Forman Corp., is the largest U.S. producer of champagne, with 1.2 million cases a year. The company produced 200,000 extra cases for this New Year’s, according to Gary Heck, Korbel president and chairman.

Party planners could encounter isolated shortages, the USDA said, especially among “certain popular and high-end brands--over $50 and mainly French--because they are typically produced in fairly limited quantities.”

U.S. imports of champagne and sparkling wine have increased more than 50% in both value and volume during the first 10 months of 1999 compared with the same period a year earlier, the department said, without giving figures.

The value of champagne and sparkling wine imports in fiscal 1999, which ended Sept. 30, was $584 million, the bulk of them from Europe.