TOKYO: If, in the waning hours of 2014, you find yourself drinking sparkling wine, including from the region of France that earns it the name Champagne, you can impress your fellow revelers with the following statistics. It has been a bubbly year for sparkling wine imports. They will set a record in 2014, as will overall wine imports, annual U.S. Census Bureau statistics will show when they are released in February.
Through October, sparkling wine imports were worth $731.15 million and overall wine imports $4.48 billion, according to WorldCity analysis of the latest data. Overall wine imports are up a relatively modest 2.53 percent over the same 10-month period last year while sparkling wine is up 11.54 percent.
There are more bubbles in more wine. Because of the rapid growth, sparkling wine imports are accounting for a greater percentage of total wine imports in 2014 than at any time in more than a decade, although the variance has been limited over the years. Through the first 10 months of 2014, sparkling wine imports accounted for 16.31 percent of all wine imports. Five years ago, that percentage was 11.62 percent.
