Champagne is timeless. It’s a staple of success with cultural references spanning from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notes on the Jazz Age to Season 2 of Emily in Paris. The funny thing about timelessness, though, is the seemingly contradictory nature of its reliance on trends. Like a good pair of denim or a dirty martini, the timelessness of a half-filled tulip glass is far from stagnant. Trends change the desired tailoring of jeans, the taste of a cocktail, and the time and place of champagne consumption. This topic has been hard to avoid recently, especially as we have entered a full-blown champagne shortage.

If your roommate is not the assistant to a Hollywood hot-shot producer, you probably didn’t have the kind of second-hand anxiety that I had in the early hours of February 8th. It was Oscar nomination morning, and the adrenaline was pumping. The breaks were pushed, however, from a fatal fork in the road. Wally’s, the beloved and boujee Los Angeles wine shop, was completely out of Veuve Clicquot. I know… the horror. How in the world were all of the entertainment assistants going to explain to their bosses that no, they couldn’t get same-day delivery of the absolutely necessary gift to congratulate all the nominees? My roommate went on to call the mom-and-pop wine shops in the area, and sure enough, they were clean out as well.  

Being born and raised in Hollywood, this was part of my hometown industry that I had never before considered. Just as sporting goods stores prepare for the weather (I would assume. Again, born and raised in Hollywood here), florists and wine store owners alike surely anticipate a spike in champagne sales when it’s the gold-statue season. However, upon closer inspection, it became clear that it wasn’t just awards shows that were causing the great champagne shortage of 2022. Major logistical and personal shifts brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic changed the entirety of the champagne market, and the world is still recovering. 

After speaking with champagne buyers of Hollywood wine shops, I had a better understanding of just how short we are on the bubbly. According to Gary Westby of K&L Wine Merchants of California, champagne that used to take two months to arrive has tripled to six. He explained that the shortage is threefold: producers struggling to get all of the tools like back-labels and foils, the shortage of shipping refrigerators (which is completely necessary to ensure champagne doesn’t spoil before arriving on the West Coast), and a devastatingly low harvest in 2021. The supply-chain shortage wasn’t the only trend that caused this issue, however. The trend of champagne consumption drastically shifted in the face of stay-at-home orders and business closures as well. 

Westby noted that the U.S. champagne market exponentially increased during the pandemic. As people were no longer going to restaurants or bars, they realized that champagne is much less expensive when you buy it at retail price. He explained that although this was a dark time in which there was far less to celebrate, the light taste of champagne paired perfectly with increased alcohol consumption and a will to make the most mundane feel successful. Luckily, many Hollywood merchants like Wally’s, Larchmont Village Wine & Cheese, and Du Vin Wine and Spirits have seemed to have gotten their shipments in and restocked their champagne shelves. This February crisis, however, showed a level of intimacy in the seemingly unrelatable entertainment industry culture. Wine shops serve Hollywood beyond the red carpet, giving the accessibility of celebration into people’s homes. While these shops have spent decades preparing for this season, the global shortage presented a seemingly impossible challenge. It seems we all have been looking for something to celebrate in the shadow of these past few years. I guess you just have to plan ahead to raise a glass this year, as a proper cheers is in order to Hollywood assistants and everyone just trying to make it work. It seems that champagne is never going out of style.