Crypto News: Here’s to 2025!

As we bid farewell to 2024, we're also reaching the end of the holiday bubbly season. Today, Elin McCoy from Bloomberg Pursuits shares a few favorite sparklers for your midnight toast, plus 50 more best wine buys—because Valentine's Day is a holiday, too. Also: Another luxury story you might have missed. Contact the editor of this newsletter here. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Programming note: The Businessweek Daily will be off on New Year's Day. See you Thursday.

A bold bubbly is never a bad way to get the holiday party started. These choices reflect what's trending in sparkling wine, from brand-new cuvées to underrated styles and regions where bargains reign. Each one has a great backstory, too, to get the conversation flowing. Here's a sample from several different price points.

Make New Year's a fizzy affair. Photographer: Janelle Jones for Bloomberg Businessweek

Fleur de Miraval Petite Fleur Champagne ($110): This mouthwatering rosé bubbly is the new, less expensive version of Brad Pitt's lush and impressive $350 Fleur de Miraval. Similar in style to the grand vin with crushed dried flower scents and bright energy, the Petite Fleur trades some complexity and depth for pretty notes of lemongrass, citrus and toast—perfect for a romantic aperitif.

2022 Adami Vigneto Giardino Rive di Colbertaldo Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore ($23): The best producers in Italy's Veneto region have been aiming to elevate prosecco beyond an affordable, uninteresting party pour. This crisp, tangy, single-vineyard award winner succeeds with gentle sweet fruit, salty minerality and a depth of savory flavors. Lower in alcohol, it's oh-so-easy to sip and priced to party.

NV Domaine de Montbourgeau Crémant du Jura Brut Zéro ($33): Even from France's trendy Jura, crémants are sadly underrated, which gives this all-chardonnay bottling an insidery aura and an accessible price point. Made in the traditional method, it resembles a delicate, racy, bone‑dry Champagne. A complex minerality and slightly salty, green apple-y character make it an ideal match with oysters and caviar.

Keep reading: Trendy Sparkling Wines to Get Your Holiday Party Started Right

Want more options? I sampled 4,223 wines from 20 countries this year, then culled 2024's 50 good buys, a list that now includes nonalcoholic options. Here are a few:

Whites
2023 Dolly Wines California Chardonnay ($15): Don't laugh. Country music legend Dolly Parton's foray into the world of wine is better than you'd expect, and the price is right. With notes of pear, lemon zest and pineapple, it's great for cozy sipping while listening to Dolly classics.

2023 Oberon Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc ($20): Napa sauvignon blancs are hitting $50 and up, so this fresh, layered, fruity example with a screw cap stands out as a bargain.

Reds
2022 Tenuta di Capezzana Barco Reale Carmignano ($18): Talk about an ideal house red! Think tangy dark cherry and savory tobacco leaf flavors, a round texture and the right amount of bright acidity for all kinds of food. The sangiovese-cabernet sauvignon blend comes from less-well-known Tuscan region of Carmignano.

2022 Frog's Leap Flycatcher ($35): A long-time organic Napa producer makes this deliciously drinkable, soft-textured red blend (zinfandel, petite sirah, merlot, syrah), which goes with everything from steak to pizza.

Alcohol-free options. Source: Vendors

No-alcohol Vino
Oddbird GSM ($25): From a Swedish brand founded over a decade ago that went nationwide in the US this year, this rich, smooth red nonalcoholic blend from southern France is deservedly popular. Drink it until the next shipment of my favorite, Oddbird's bold spicy tempranillo made from organic Spanish grapes labeled Addiction, arrives next year. Best served slightly chilled.

NV French Bloom Le Rosé ($44): LVMH recently invested in French Bloom, whose three NA fizz cuvées are crafted by a Champagne maker and poured at many of Europe's Michelin-starred restaurants. The rosé is all about fresh berry and peach aromas and flavors.

Keep reading: The 50 Best Wines Under $50 From Our Critic, Who Tasted 4,223

Want more recommendations for beer, spirits and other delicious drinking options? Subscribe to the Top Shelf newsletter here.

In Brief

Competition is poised to ramp up in 2025 in stablecoins, which collectively have grown to about $205 billion in market capitalization.
The world's 500 richest people got vastly richer in 2024, with their combined net worth hitting a new milestone of $10 trillion.
For all the exuberance about Tesla Inc.'s stock, Wall Street isn't so sure the carmaker can avoid its first annual sales decline in more than a decade.

On the Latest Elon, Inc.

Photo Illustration by 731; Photos: Getty Images (3); NASA (1)

In the second part of the holiday special edition of the Elon, Inc. podcast, host Max Chafkin is joined by Bloomberg Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, tech editor Sarah Frier and special guest Ryan Broderick, host of the podcast Panic World and founder of the Garbage Day newsletter. Together they play some games and handicap Musk's moves for 2025.

Listen and subscribe to Elon, Inc. on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal.

ICYMI

We're taking a look back at some of Businessweek's most popular stories from 2024. It was a big year for the magazine—in June we relaunched the print edition as a monthly. (We also expanded a daily digital experience that includes this here newsletter.) The inaugural cover story was by Businessweek editor Brad Stone and Angelina Rascouet, who visited one of the world's richest men, Bernard Arnault, in Paris on the eve of the Olympics.

Bernard Arnault in Paris Photographer: Ruven Afanador for Bloomberg Businessweek

Every Saturday morning, accompanied by a rotating entourage of deputies, bodyguards and offspring, Bernard Arnault spends a few hours checking in on his temples devoted to handbags, couture, jewelry and exorbitantly priced watches.

The 75-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE is not there to shop. With a strict sensibility refined over decades of sitting front row at fashion shows as he developed Christian Dior, Bulgari, Celine, Fendi and Louis Vuitton stores, Arnault spots any incongruities that might disrupt the aura of opulence he has carefully constructed. Then he reels off texts and emails to his senior executives describing any perceived deficiencies in bullet points of obsessive detail.

Antoine Arnault, his eldest son and the head of communications and image at LVMH, recalls one such missive from his father in April, critiquing a counter at a Berluti store in Tokyo. "He loved the first concept I did at Berluti with an architect 12 years ago," Antoine says. "He comes back to me with, 'Do you remember the patinated bar you had in that store? Try to put it in here.' "

Alexandre, Antoine's younger half-brother, and the executive vice president for product and communications at another LVMH house, Tiffany & Co., has a similar story from his father's recent visit to Dubai. "He made a bunch of comments that were very, very detail-oriented," Alexandre says, about "the chairs in the store and the shoes the salespeople were wearing. Things that you wouldn't typically notice, but once you've seen tens of thousands of stores over the years, I think it's what comes to your mind immediately."

Hang on—their shoes? When asked, Bernard Arnault recalls the complaint immediately. "The guy had, I don't know, Nike shoes or something," he explains with an unapologetic smile, noting that they were not the Air Force 1s produced in a collaboration between Nike and Tiffany, which sold for $400. "Our sales attendants should be wearing [LVMH] clothes."

Keep reading: Bernard Arnault Explains How He Built LVMH Into an Empire of Opulence

The Market-Making Giants

$50 trillion

That's the amount of US debt expected to be outstanding in the next 10 years. The elite bond dealers who play a vital role in ensuring the Treasuries market works properly warn of the risk of growing pressures as the debt balloons.

New Year's Eve Electricity

"If this continues on until tonight, then, God save us, this will be total chaos. What a way to end the year."

Julio Romero

Who was delivering newspapers in San Juan when the blackout hit

Almost all of Puerto Rico was without power Tuesday after a widespread failure in the territory's fragile electricity grid triggered an islandwide blackout.