Congratulations!
Maybe you’ve just had a new baby, or a major promotion at work, or just need the perfect
bottle of alcohol to smash against your brand new boat.
For all these occasions, it can only be Champagne, everyone’s favorite sparkling French wine.
Seriously, it’s insanely popular.
In 2007, a staggering 338.7 million bottles of the stuff were sold to eager customers
all over the world.
But while the taste may be fine, the price tag can be terrifying - bottles of authentic
French Champagne, especially the vintage stuff, can cost up to and beyond ten thousand dollars
apiece.
Yikes!
Why is real Champagne so expensive?
Is it the process of its creation that justifies all those extra zeroes, or is it the wine’s
history that gives it such pricey prestige?
Pop open a cold bottle of bubbly - if you’re buying, of course - and let’s find out.
The first thing you need to understand about why authentic Champagne is so valuable is
that it’s old as all hell.
While we think of these classy bottles of suds as quintessentially French, it was another
culture entirely - the Romans - that got the Champagne ball rolling.
Because their vast empire handily contained modern-day France, they were the first to
plant vineyards - the specialized fields of wine-making grapes - in the Champagne region.
That’s right, the Champagne region.
You may have noticed that we stressed the word “Real” in the title of this video,
and that’s because not all Champagne is created equal.
In fact, to be more specific, not all “champagne” is even really Champagne.
About 160 kilometers east of Paris is the Champagne Wine Region, within a historical
province once known as - yep, you guessed it - Champagne.
Under EU law, only sparkling white wine from this region can actually declare itself Champagne,
anything else is just a standard bottle of sparkling white wine committing some light
identity fraud.
Think of it like a Philly Cheese Steak - Sure, you can get one in a diner in New York, Kentucky,
or LA, but it’s not really a Philly Cheese Steak unless it comes straight from the City
of Brotherly Love.
And that right there is the first reason that real Champagne is so expensive: Exclusivity
and Import Costs.
When the entire world’s supply of authentic Champagne comes from one region in France,
global demand being met by limited supply hikes up the price.
The Champagne region is only about twice the size of San Diego, but it brings in over five
billion dollars a year on its wine business - though that took a hit during the COVID-19
pandemic, both due to global financial stress and the fact there was just a lot less to
celebrate.
But back to the past.
Vineyards in the Champagne Region have always been a big deal.
The first successful vineyard in the region we have records for belonged to a literal
saint - St. Remi, a powerful bishop who christened the country’s Frankish king, Clovis the
First, leading the entire Frankish population to convert to Christianity in the 5th century.
Needless to say, that’s a pretty big deal, and a powerful achievement to attach to your
burgeoning Vineyard business.
A saint being one of the key figures in the creation of an intoxicant may seem like a
funny contradiction, but without Benedictine Monks, wine would not be where it is today.
Throughout the early to late medieval period, monks were producing wine for use in the Eucharist
ceremony - the act of using wine and wafers to pay homage to Christ at the Last Supper.
Perhaps one of the most famous names in the world of wine, Dom Pérignon, was a hyper-perfectionist
winemaking monk whose strict and innovative methods were a key part of making Champagne
what it is today.
His influence is so crucial that over 400 years later, many bottles of Champagne still
bear his name.
Fun fact: The most expensive bottle of Dom Pérignon wine ever sold - Dom Pérignon Rose
1959 - cost a terrifying $84,700.
That’s more than a lot of people will ever own at any one time in their life, for a single
bottle of wine.
Champagne was a staple in coronation celebrations for new kings for centuries on end, leading
to another reason that even today, wines from this region are so darn expensive: It’s
that Regal Reputation.
The second you hear that something is literally the drink of kings, your estimation of its
value skyrockets.
Royalty were the Kardashians of the past - their every choice and action created new tastes
within their kingdoms, and much like a classy Champagne fountain, the tastes trickle down.
When the royals start doing it, the aristocracy below them begins to copy, hoping to curry
favor with their leader and appear more refined than their fellow nobles.
When the aristocracy starts doing it, then even you, the potato-grubbing peasants, try
to get in on the action.
Champagne has managed to preserve its image as a status symbol over many transformations
and over a thousand years of time.
Technically speaking, it actually outlasted the French royal line.
To this day, people don’t just get bored and decide to pop a bottle of Champagne for
an evening of TV dinners and Game of Thrones reruns.
Champagne is for celebrations and special occasions.
And you may think, “Well that’s because it’s so expensive”, but it isn’t that
one-way.
The value is equally created and sustained by Champagne’s perception as a special kind
of wine.
It’s the funny thing about all commodities - while it may all seem like solid calculations
and hard figures define value, the prevailing belief in the market is an equally important
factor in making real Champagne so expensive.
But the kind of Champagne enjoyed by Romans and ancient French Kings would practically
be unrecognizable compared to Champagne today.
Despite Champagne today being synonymous with sparkling white wine, in appearance it used
to be far more similar to its flat, red cousin.
Predictably, because this is France we’re talking about here, the changes came about
because of a dramatic, long-held, and bitter feud.
The Champagne region had a fierce rivalry with their neighbors in the region of Burgundy
back in the Middle Ages, with Burgundy being famous for its high-quality red wines.
To this day, you’re liable to hear people dub a fine French Pinot Noir as a bottle of
Burgundy.
And the Champagne Region was actually the underdog in this Battle of the Wines because
the harsh climate of the region was far less hospitable to Vineyard growth than their Southern
Burgundian neighbors.
They didn’t have the right stuff to compete against Burgundy’s red wine supremacy, so
they decided to come at it from another angle: Trying to produce white wine to avoid the
competition.
Problem was, their wine wasn’t actually that good - until our good old friend Dom
Pérignon came along to help refine the delicate art of making white wine from red grapes.
He and English Physician and Scientist Christopher Merret found the right techniques to properly
ferment the wine, with the addition of sugar before the second fermentation.
However, Dom wasn’t a fan of one of what would later become one of Champagne’s defining
features: The bubbles.
And this wasn’t just a taste thing, either.
The build-up of air pressure during wine fermentation would cause corks to randomly fire off like
rifles, or bottles to explode entirely, giving them the admittedly badass nickname le vin
du diable, or “The Devil’s Wine.”
But these bubbles were actually proving to be a unique selling point, especially over
in England, so different accommodations were made to suit Champagne’s unique traits:
Stronger bottles, unique corks, and of the course the iconic muselet, the little wire
cage that keeps the cork in place - created by Adolphe Jaquesson in 1844.
Through trial, error, hard work, and happy accidents, the iconic méthode champenoise,
also known as the Méthode Traditionnelle and the Méthode Classique, had finally been
perfected, giving us the iconic wine we need to remortgage our houses to afford today.
With this much stunning history behind it, is it any wonder that Champagne is so costly?
As any connoisseur will tell you, when you’re buying a bottle of finely aged wine, you’re
also buying the story.
But enough about history, let’s jump back to the present day.
Plenty of things have long histories but won’t break the bank to afford.
So there has to be some expensive madness to the methods and circumstances of making
authentic Champagne.
The first factor is the sheer amount of time it takes to produce a good bottle of authentic
Champagne.
Everyone has heard the old truism, “Time is money”, so it follows that work taking
longer to produce naturally costs more.
Every stage of the Champagne process is more meticulous, time-consuming, and also labor-intensive
than almost any other wine.
For starters, winemakers must wait for the correct climate conditions - with the Champagne
region famously being cooler than other winemaking regions in France, giving their black grapes
the right acidity to make sparkling wine.
But this makes the wine production process generally more unreliable and less cost-effective
than elsewhere.
In many cases, it can take a Vineyard three years after planting to begin producing viable
grapes.
Then comes the picking process, which is equally insane.
Every single grape in a bottle of real champagne is picked by hand rather than any kind of
machine.
What does this process entail, you wonder?
120,000 specially trained workers set off into over 82,000 acres of Vineyards in order
to carefully pluck each grape from the vine.
The sheer cost of doing it this way immediately increases the price by an order of magnitude.
At this point, specialized crushing machines are brought in to squeeze out the “must”,
which is then siphoned into large, metal vats to ferment for over six weeks.
Specialists then bring out samples of the previous year’s batch to mix in, in order
to ensure a sense of consistency between batches, giving it all that distinctive Champagne flavor
people are willing to pay top dollar for.
Yeast and sugar are then added to the mix, which activates the second fermentation.
And that right there is when things get really crazy.
The second fermentation involves the wine being bottled and laid down horizontally in
a cellar beneath one of the homes in the region.
And then, once again, they play the waiting game.
A lot of your cheaper, mass-produced bottles of wine are sold off by now, but not Champagne.
For Champagne, the second fermentation needs to last at least fifteen months - so at minimum,
it takes longer to make a human baby than a bottle of Champagne.
But the higher end of the spectrum can involve the wine being fermented and aged for up to
and even over a decade.
That’s right: It can take an eighth of an average human life to produce one top-quality
batch of vintage Champagne.
An American president can serve two terms while this wine is just sitting in the darkened
cellar of some guy named Pierre.
Working in producing Champagne isn’t just a job, it’s an entire lifestyle.
It takes six weeks to make a custom Armani suit, six months to make a Rolls Royce, a
year to make a Rolex, and ten years to make a bottle of Champagne.
Let that sink in, along with everything else you’ve heard today, and suddenly, that insane
price tag really doesn’t seem so crazy.
It’s not a mystery why everyone from royalty to rappers brags about having a bottle of
Champagne on hand.
So there you have it, the history and creation processes that make real Champagne one of
the most expensive luxury commodities in the entire world.
To paraphrase critic Yvonne Halling, once you’re in the know, you stop wondering why
real Champagne is so expensive and start wondering why it’s so cheap...Well, except for that
$84,700 bottle of Dom Pérignon.
I think all of us, except for maybe Jeff Bezos, would probably find that one a little steep...
Now check out “Most Expensive Drink in the World” and “Who Decides The Price of Wine?”
for more classy wine that’ll destroy your bottom line!