The added costs of bubbles

Upon scanning the shelves of any given wine shop in anytown, anywhere, the question “Why are sparkling wines so expensive?” surely has come to the minds of many patrons. Let me clarify - not ALL sparklers - there are indeed some really cheap, bad sparkling wines on the market, in fact probably percentually more than for still wines, but that’s another post…But really, seeing $30, $40, $50 and up bottles are commonplace amongst the ranks of bubblies. Now to be fair, most of these examples are true Champagnes, and to some degree, the prices of Champagnes are inflated due to large degree of “sizzle” that come with actual “steak” (i.e. you are, to one degree or another, paying for the wine’s reputation).

But setting Champagnes aside for now, there is actually a real, economically-based reason for these extra dollars (or Euros, Yen, etc.) and despite the fact that all of these elements are there to be seen by any drinker, most never notice, or at least never make the connection. Let’s start from the “top”…Both still and sparkling wines come packed with capsules (the material that covers the neck and cork), but there is frequently a BIG difference between the two. Still wine capsules are usually about two to three inches long, and even on fairly expensive wines, can be made from some pretty flimsy plastic material. Now have a look at the sparkler’s capsule. More often than not it is made from metal, not plastic, it is ornately printed, and includes a “apron” than reach halfway to the middle of the bottle.

And so we go ahead and remove the respective capsules. With the still wine we find a cork sunken into a glass neck, nothing more. With the sparkler, we encounter a little colored metal medallion with the winery’s name and logo. This little doodad is being clamped to the top of the cork by a twisted steel “cage” which is most properly called a “muzzle”. This apparatus is mandated by law for any wine that contains more than X amount of CO2 dissolves therein.

And speaking of corks…the still wine’s cork, once we’ve intoduced augur to plug, is revealed to be about “this” long, and is usually cut from one single piece of cork. Once we’ve removed the muzzle and the medallion from the sparkler we encounter a bulbous cork that once it is removed, reveals itself to be about twice the size and weight. Looking more closely, one then sees that the cork might be made from as many as three separate “glued” together pieces - the mushroom “cap”, the “stem”, and where the wine comes into contact with the cork, a 5 or 6 millimeter-thick disc of different quality cork material…

We lift the bottle on the left, and pour ourselves a glass of the still wine (it’s very good by the way, just in case you’re imagining along at home). Now you pick up the bottle of the sparkling wine to do the same, and immediately notice that the bottle is noticeably fatter and heavier (this extra thick glass is mandated for safety reasons)…(this wine is also quite delicious, by the way…).

I think it’s pretty clear where I’m going with this - EVERYTHING about at least the packaging of sparkling wines is more expensive than it is for the packaging of still wines: bigger, fancier, capsule; the addition of a medallion and a muzzle; the bigger, compound cork; the thicker, fatter, heavier bottle…all of these things add up to one thing: $$$! And these are just the obvious extra costs…If you’ve got bigger fatter bottles, that means that the boxes in which you ship those bottles have to just that much bigger and more rubust…this also = more $$$. OK, now you’ve got these bigger, heavier packages - shipping that added weight does not come without a price - added product weight also = more $$$. Then to all of this, at least here in the good old U.S. of A., add extra taxes to the equation. For whatever reason, there probably is, or at least was, a good reason to tax sparkling wines at a higher rate, and I’ll admit that I don’t really know precisely why it is done, but the fact still remains that sparkling wines are assessed at a higher taxation rate.

So without further belaboring of the point, the reasons for the extra dollars on the price tags of sparkling wines are there to be seen for those who will but look…some of the more prestigious appellations may indeed be tacking on a Euro or ten in reaction to both the demand and cache` of their products, but the REAL added costs of producing, bottling, and shipping sparkling wines have EVRYTHING to do with what is quantifiable, not what is intangible.

TOM CIOCCO