The principle of scarcity

I was listening to a podcast on persuasion the other day and was struck by one of the first elements in persuading someone to buy something: the principle of scarcity.

If you have used Amazon before and noticed that an item has “only three left” or if a store salesman said “this is the last one left,” you know the power of scarcity. Numerous tests have shown that people are driven to buy something if they feel it may not be available if they think about it overnight.

It’s a principle that works in the wine industry just as well.

Screaming Eagle is the poster child, but there are hundreds of wine producers who drive up prices and sales by limiting production. In many cases, there is a waiting period just to lay your hands on a wine that can cost more than $300 a bottle. If they increased production, there would be no scarcity and thus no stampede to their door.

That was the case with iconic wines like Silver Oak, Caymus and even Dom Perignon whose productions are significantly larger than that of Screaming Eagle, Schafer, Opus One and others.

I got an offer from de Negoce, a reseller of wine owned by Cameron Hughes. The Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon was available from the producer for $195. Hughes was selling it for $27 — he gets the same wine from the producer with the understanding he won’t identify the source.

He wrote, “The winery bottled their portion and sold us the rest of the blend out of the tank so we have the exact same 100% Cabernet Sauvignon blend as the original bottling.”

In short, the original producer didn’t want to increase production and reduce the notion of scarcity.

English fizz a nice surprise

Champagne has been loathe to dispel the myth that they invented sparkling wine. I can’t blame them. They have commanded the sparkling wine industry for centuries and hold on to their rightful claim that only they can call champagne “champagne.”

But history will show that methode champenois, the process by which today’s champagne is made, was an invention of English physician Christopher Merret. He was the first to add sugar to still wine to produce a secondary fermentation.

But a century earlier, Dom Perignon was fumbling to tame the bubbles in what he called “the devil’s wine.” His problem was that fermentation would stop as temperatures in northern France dropped, only to resume in the spring when temperatures climbed. The result was carbon dioxide (bubbles) which once trap would cause a bottle to burst. Champagne started as an accident; for the Brits sparkling wine was intentional.

However apologetic the good monk, the Brits loved the bubbles in the 17th century and invented a stronger glass bottle. Voila, champagne lived on.

With that history refresher, I was eager to sample two sparkling wines made in England. With more than 400 wineries in southeast England, the Brits have been dabbling in winemaking for some time. However, their success with sparkling wine didn’t appear until global warming made its growing conditions more hospitable.

The two sparking wines — “Ridgeview Bloomsbury and Ridgeview Cavendish — were quite good. They both use the same primary grapes used in Champagne — chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. That makes their product closer to champagne than prosecco (glera) and cava.(xarello and more).

I liked the elegance and depth of the Bloomsbury brut, which was different from the Henriot Brut I tasted as well. But it held its own.

So did its price. The Henriot seemed like a deal at $45 compared to the $55 prices for each English sparkling wine. I have to wonder why anyone would choose and English sparkling wine when for less money he could get French champagne.

However, the English are proud to drink locally made sparkling wine. In fact, sales of champagne have plummeted in England due in part to the local competition as well as the popularity of prosecco and Brexit.

If you are English, be proud of these wines. Surely Dr. Merret would.

For more champagne recommendations, see “My Column.”