When Eileen Crane recently accepted an invitation to speak about sparkling wine production at an Oregon vintners’ conference, she wasn’t expecting much. Crane has been the winemaker at Domaine Carneros, Champagne Taittinger’s Napa Valley winery, since 198 7. She has seen interest in sparkling wine production fizz up and then pop like bubbles in a coupe glass. “I expected to address three people,” she says. “I walked in to find 120 eager faces staring at me.”
Everyone wants to be more sparkly these days-bubbly is booming. Sparkling wine sales have been surging in the U.S. for more than a decade, and there are few signs of the trend fizzling soon. Sparkling wine was long associated primarily with luxury and celebration, with wedding toasts and birthdays and the annual dropping of a ball at midnight. But an increasing number of consumers are discovering that the wines go just as well with dinner on Tuesday, binge-watching with friends on Thursday, or a Sunday summer picnic in the park.
Featured in Wine Spectator | June 2019
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