Chandon sells a whopping 80,000 dozen bottles a year. They were big fizzers, New Year's Eve and the Sydney Olympic Games - in the eyes of wine marketing executives, that is. Have a close look around your local bottle shop and you'll detect the telltale signs. Psychedelic bottles of bubbly labelled with sundry millennium slogans, gathering dust and looking decidedly second-hand, prices desperately discounted. It's getting older and less salable every minute.
Prices are soft because there's no rush and few people in the trade are expecting one.
But the trend continues this Christmas because this is the only way retailers can sell really cheap champagne. The big, famous houses won't let them discount below a certain level. I was seriously underwhelmed by the two Chanoine wines, a non-vintage and a t te de cuv e named Tsarina and by the Cattier range and the Gauthier '93 vintage. But the prices are so low as to relegate any criticism on my part to nit-picking. Well, as usual some Aussie bubblies are better and some worse.