Vendors Celebrate Demand for Bubbly

It hardly took a genius to divine that a New Year’s Eve like no other would fuel a dizzying demand for champagne. Still, to possess an enviable stash of prestige bubbly a matter of weeks before the new millennium calls for both experience and serious connections. David Breitstein, the owner of the Duke of Bourbon wine and spirits store here, has both.

That’s why later this month, Breitstein will be auctioning off two limited edition bottles of Cristal, the trendy champagne favored by Hollywood types and one of several high-end brands that has fueled talk of a year-end champagne shortage. Cristal’s French maker produced only 2,000 mammoth “methuselahs,” decanters that hold as much as eight regular-sized bottles, for the Y2K celebration. Breitstein, who estimates that about 100 of the embossed vessels bearing a prized 1990 vintage made it into the United States, placed an order four years ago to get his hands on three of them.

When he sold the first of his lot in October, it went for $5,000. The remaining two will go to the highest bidders on Dec. 1.

“We wanted to do something fun and unique, and since these are so rare, an auction seemed like a fair way to go about it,” Breitstein said.

Wine sellers concede the bubbly shortage has been over-hyped. Still, these are intoxicating times for the San Fernando Valley’s fine wine and spirits vendors. The pull-out-all-the-stops party atmosphere wrought by the new millennium, which has sent sales skyward like popping corks, coincides with what has been an already strong market for expensive wines in recent years.

People with wine cellars capable of holding 10,000 or more bottles, a rare species when the stores opened two or three decades ago, have become common in recent years, thanks in part to a blazing stock market that has created a breed of wealthy collectors who acquire wine with the same abandon as kids collecting Pokemon cards, says Marty Petersil, who owns Flask in Studio City.

“When I opened 38 years ago, when you wanted a bottle of wine, you bought one bottle,” Petersil said. “Now, people open a bottle and they drink it and they love it and they say, ‘Send five cases up to the house.’ ”

As a result, getting the good stuff at a good price may be a challenge. Breitstein, for example, is reserving the rest of his coveted Cristal supply (he is still receiving a small weekly allotment) for his steady clients. He has also placed limits on how many other status spirits produced just for the millennium, such as the $350-a-bottle Anno Domini 2000 brandy or the $225-a-bottle Dom Perignon with the sterling silver keepsake cork holder, he’ll sell to any one customer.

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Driving demand, of course, is the heady novelty of celebrating an event that comes around once in a thousand years, But another factor seems to be the public’s greater sophistication when it comes to fermented beverages.

Paul Smith, owner of the Woodland Hills Wine Co., says his business has tripled since he moved his store from Northridge to a bigger site in Woodland Hills 18 months ago. He attributes the increase in good measure to a thirst for older, rare vintages of wine and champagne, particularly those sold in large-format bottles that not only look festive, but usually produce a better bubbly since there is less air per volume to spoil the brew. One customer recently purchased a 12-bottle case of 1959 champagne that cost $375 a bottle and will be used exclusively for a New Year’s Eve party.

“I’ve been doing this 30 years and I’ve never seen such excitement,” said Smith. “There are people who haven’t had champagne in years or even drink much who have spent three, four or five thousand dollars just walking in. They buy up these $100 or $125 bottles of champagne like they are going to a fruit stand.”

Smith says that even he, an experienced dealer, has been surprised by the fine-champagne fever. He knows a man who squirreled away 20 cases of 1990 Dom Perignon as an investment last December.

“He had shopped everywhere to get every case he could get his hands on, and he said, ‘I’m going to drink a couple and make money.’ I thought he was crazy,” Smith recalls.

Since then, the per-bottle price of Dom Perignon has climbed from about $80 to $120 or even $150, depending on the vintage, proving his friend right. Similarly, a bottle of Cristal that sold for $110 this time last year is now going for $170 to $200.

“I didn’t think the public would spend this much on champagne. But the millennium is not just a hype. It looks like reality,” Smith said.

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Thanks in part to publicity about possible shortages and in part to an increase in the number of people who are choosing to give champagne as holidays gifts instead of wine, Petersil figures that he has already doubled his champagne sales over last year’s, despite the price increases.

The Duke of Bourbon’s Breitstein is preparing to sell 10 times as much champagne during December as he did a year earlier. Virtually every champagne house has produced a special bottle with either the word “millennium” or the number “2000” on the glass or label.

The giddiness has not been limited to champagne, either, according to Petersil.

“People are buying better glasses, they are getting better caviar, they are going up one step from what they usually buy. Most people only live through one new millennium, if they are lucky, so they are doing it right,” he said.

Last year, Breitstein started selling a set of six Bordeaux wines held in etched millennium magnums for $1,000. Beverly Fittipaldo, a longtime Duke of Bourbon customer from Woodland Hills, snatched up one of them then, along with two $250 magnums of J. Schram champagne that were expected to arrive at the beginning of this month.

Last week, she was back to select another eight bottles of wine for her family’s holiday gathering in Ohio. At the last minute, she also plopped down another $700 for two bottles of the Anno Domini 2000 after Breitstein gave it a glowing review.

“I bought a lot early because I sort of do things impulsively and I want to make sure I get what I want,” she said.

All the local wine merchants have been calling their faithful customers and encouraging them to buy their favorite wines and champagnes now or risk being disappointed come year’s end.

At the same time, they readily acknowledge that there will be plenty of champagne, even good champagne, available right up until the clock strikes midnight Jan. 1, 2000.

“We can still get 1990 vintage champagnes in the $50 range that are world class, maybe not quite as well-known as some others, but equal quality,” promises Smith.

“Korbel and Mumm’s are readily available,” echoed Petersil. “They would love to be sold off.”

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And if champagne is not your thing, Breitstein has another option: a magnum of Budweiser sold in a wooden box with four Y2K commemorative glasses for $50.

Although December promises to be a hectic month for the wine stores--Breitstein says that even in an ordinary year, customers line up three deep around the counter during the holidays--merchants say they are looking forward to being part of the hoopla.

“All of us started out to be good neighborhood merchants, yet none of us planned to have the volume we do today because interest was never high as it has been the last six to 12 months,” Breitstein said. “The millennium has been a nice benefit for us. We are being rewarded in the twilight of our careers.”