A Worldwide Champagne Shortage May Impact Your NYE Celebrations
I was recently shopping for a bottle of wine for my Grandpa’s birthday over Thanksgiving weekend when the shelf displaying a few bottles of Veuve Clicquot caught my eye. I wasn’t drawn to it because of the gleaming orange labels, a color which I believe would have been called “macaroni and cheese” in a box of 64 Crayola crayons (sharpener included), nor its status as a go-to bubbly. What I saw and felt was quite literal sticker stock—$59.99. II don’t exactly keep tabs on the price of champagne, but I know that a bottle of Veuve is always, always priced at around $50. By around, I mean maybe it is $48.99 or $51.99, depending on where I’m shopping. But a $10 increase was significant.
This is just one reminder of the fact that we’re experiencing a champagne shortage right now. The shortage is a result of the one-two punch that is global warming and the supply chain crisis, due to the ongoing global pandemic (no big deal). “There was a surplus of champagne just before COVID…and then COVID happened and then there was copious amounts of drinking of all kinds of wine. When the world reopened, the one thing that I noticed moved the fastest was champagne. People were feeling festive, which created high demand,” Paola Embry, certified sommelier and Wine Director of the Wrigley Mansion, told me in an interview.