Losing Its Fizz

摘要

Champagne has long been associated with luxury, success and extravagance, thanks to a constrained supply, clever marketing, literary associations (James Bond was fond of Taittinger in the books and Bollinger in the films) and powerful customers, from the Russian imperial court, for whom Roederer's Cristal was invented, to Sir Winston Churchill, who downed copious amounts of Pol Roger. Over the past two decades champagne shipments went up by an average of 2.2% a year. Recently some markets have grown even faster: America's consumption rose by 3.5% arnyear, Britain's by 4.2% and Japan's by a foaming 181% between 2002 and 2007.