Champagne is Success Itself

The very few readers of this blog must forgive me for the apparent obsession with food for this week. American Magazine's current issue has this pithy but fantastic analysis about the small problem faced by the manufacturers of champagne. There's panic out there among the connoisseurs that there is insufficient champagne to meet growing demand from the world's increasing number of the affluent and status conscious. Whereas the rest see a crisis, I see a successfully marketed product.

A thirty fold increase in demand in China merely shows that the product is becoming rarer and that prices will rise to match that demand. Real markets are at work here. There's no guarantee that the prices will remain high but any substitution that occurs will help to moderate prices and the possibility of exercising market power. Only a successful product should denote success. champagne succeeds today.