Laid-back Champagne bars serving comfort food are on the rise worldwide

Maybe it started when Bill Murray persuaded wine snobs it was OK to drink Champagne over ice.

Over the past few years, sparkling wine has been on a tear worldwide – it’s one of the three fastest-growing wine categories, according to a VinExpo/IWSR study released this past June and in 2016. And Champagne shipments to the US increased for the fourth year in a row, to 21 million bottles.

The study also projects that global consumption of sparkling wine will increase another 8.7 per cent by 2019, significantly more than overall wine consumption, at 1.4 per cent.

And with all this enthusiasm for the fizzy stuff comes a new trend: hip bubbly bars.

At Air’s Champagne Parlor, a playful art deco “salon and living room” devoted to sparkling wine that opened just over a month ago in New York’s West Village, on offer is a drink called the WWBMD. That’s short for “What Would Bill Murray Do?” and it’s a Champagne drink poured over ice with “expressed lemon” for US$15.

The bar mixes hard-to-find grower Champagnes from tiny producers with high and lowbrow food and nostalgic blues and Motown.

“I wanted to turn the paradigm of the champagne bar on its head and introduce people to up-and-coming bubbles in fun, unexpected ways,” says 29-year-old owner Ariel Arce.

Air’s list of more than 100 bottles reflects the zeitgeist, with grower Champagne favourites and pét-nats, as well as top Proseccos, and even an unusual sparkling wine from Greece made from the xinomavro grape.

Value, not a word that most people associate with great Champagne, is essential, she says. For a long time, bubbly was sold as a branded luxury product. Now drinkers have discovered it’s also a wine category where they can find good deals and interesting flavours.

Like other new-style fizz bars, Air’s is pushing the idea that Champagne can be an un-stuffy drink that goes with more than expensive caviar. Yes, Arce offers three kinds, but served with chive potato chips.