At the beginning of 2009 (and for the 14 years before), Park Lane was all about “private label champagne” or “own brand champagne” or maybe even “own label champagne”; never “personalised champagne”.
As the year unfurled, so it became obvious that “personalised champagne” 
is what people think of when they want their own champagne - and we know this thanks to the mountain of information that Google collects, analyses and regurgitates so this cannot be wrong!
And this because champagne is all about perception. Champagne is a highly regulated region and its wines highly prized: quality of product and respect for the brand is what perpetuates the magic, image and romance of the bubbly. This is why there is always surprise when an unknown champagne is ranked above a known brand champagne at a blind tasting - and yet both champagnes will use the same grapes blended in the same way to the same rules. On paper the brand champagne is perceived as being superior and typically it will be more expensive to buy and yet because it is a known brand, the consumer perceives it to be better quality.
So at Park Lane, and without a known brand of champagne to personalise, we still want a polished halo imagined to be hovering over us. We go to great lengths to choose good quality champagnes and to ensure all our products are appropriately labelled, including a deluxe back label, and properly presented; typically every bottle is wrapped in tissue paper before packing and despatch.
It is the little things that do count and with us the little things come as standard. If there was a measure of how far we came in 2009, it is probably not the number of bottles sold, not the conversion rate of online visitors to customers and not the cost per acquisition of a new customer. It is actually the significant number of customers who voluntarily contacted us to say how impressed they were by our levels of service, general customer care and attention to detail. All of which come as standard.
Now for 2010 we can concentrate on improving those other stats as well!
Pip pip.
Nope, not Google fruit but genuine champagne grape fruit!
Effectively this is pressed juice that cannot be used for a certain time and which is intended to subsidise yield in the event of a truly awful harvest in the future. 2,000kg/hectare headed to top the blockage stocks up to their maximum limit this year and the balance of the juice went off to become industrial alcohol. As it was such a prolific harvest, the producers could afford to be highly selective - hence why so many grapes were left for the birds. Interestingly, it was mainly black grapes that I spotted on the vines across the region.
as a sort of demand stimulus, particularly while the £/€ equation is so horrid.
There will be a glut of supermarket cut price champagne offers in the UK this year as we run up to Christmas. In fact, this has been the pattern for the past few years so no change there. These headline grabbers are highly restricted offers and are being subsidised by the supermarkets so they can secure our grocery purchases at the same time. Scary fact: Tesco handles 1 in every 4 bottles of wine sold in the UK as an “off” sale, according to the Daily Telegraph on Saturday!
