Champagne Production Squeeze

Sept. 18, 2007 — -- The pop of a champagne cork is the universal sound of celebration, but imagine the next wedding, new baby or New Year's Eve celebration without the world's most-famous bubbly.

We went to France's Champagne region for this year's annual harvest and found champagne producers struggling to meet soaring demand.

"Only some special places, some plots, have been classified to be good enough to produce the kind of grapes we need to elaborate the quality of champagne," said Bertrand Steip of Moet & Chandon, "and we are close to the limits in terms of planting and production so that means that in the years to come the amounts of champagne produced every year is going to reach the limits and is going to be limited."

The world is drinking more champagne than ever, especially the nouveaux riches in Russia, India and China, like the buyers from Beijing we met touring champagne's famous caves.

"Champagne is very delicious and romantic for me," said Sally Sung.

Booming demand means record sales. Total sales hit 330 million bottles this year, up from 280 million in 2002. That all sounds like good news. The trouble is, France's champagne vineyards can no longer grow, age and bottle enough bubbly to go around.

The champagne region is limited by French law to fewer then 150 square miles. And nothing, not even a shortage, will allow growers to expand the size or the output of their vineyards, or to abandon age-old but inefficient methods, such as handpicking every bunch of grapes.

Some producers are making things even worse by hoarding bottles — an estimated 100 million bottles — hoping their stash will be worth enough to retire on some day.

We met Pierre Cheval-Gatinois, whose family has been making champagne for 11 generations. He gave us a tour of his hidden treasures and when pointing to one fine bottle he is keeping said, "No, it's not for sale. It could be pity to sell such a bottle."