Has Champagne lost its crown?

A closer look at reasons and potential solutions for the recent sales losses.

Champagne has long touted its superior position in the sparkling wine world, a position which has historically been rooted in a superior quality. While this may have been the case at the end of the 19^th or even 20^thcentury, today champagne’s desirability may be in peril – at least according to the current sales figures. Sales have yet to rebound from last year’s mega dip – in fact the provisional May MAT figure (270.9 m bottles) comes in 0.3%% below the 2024 figures (271.7 m bottles). My last post provided a detailed analysis per market and quality, yet even if export figures bounced back slightly in the first quarter of the year, the French market continues to lose momentum, with the first five months of the year coming at 33 m bottles, down 6.5% from last year’s 35.1 m bottles.

The dire economic outlook has been lingering over champagne like a dark cloud to the extent, that the generally optimistic Maxime Toubart, president of the Syndicat Général des Vignerons (SGV) used his address at the SGV’s AGM to raise a ‘hypothetical’ question about champagne’s desirability. He wanted growers to contemplate alternatives that could boost sales, without ever addressing the elephant in the room: eg overall quality. Instead he suggested cocktails as a possible solution – according to him “one out of two bottles of champagne in the US is consumed as part of a cocktail”, which in my opinion is highly dubious, but it could hold some truth if one remembers that the US-EU wine agreement of 2006 includes a grandfather clause, allowing American sparkling wines who used the word champagne before the agreement to continue to use it. Nevertheless, at current champagne pricing, it is unlikely that champagne cocktails will become a viable alternative to Prosecco’s Aperol Spritz.

Moreover, it seems that many Champenois are far from convinced that champagne should even be part of a cocktail. At a recent after work conference, organized by Effervent and l’Union newspaper, Joelle Weiss, one of the winemakers at Champagne Jaquart, presented the house’s carefully constructed cocktail “Verysistible”, as a blend of Jaquart’s cuvee Mosaique, pink vermouth, rhubarb liqueur and a puree of strawberries finished off with a rose petal. Her presentation was sparklingly engaging, but largely fell flat on the audience, of which many a member huffed at the mere idea of champagne as a cocktail ingredient (even if it is the main ingredient). It pays to point out that afterwork was centered around how champagne could overcome its current sales slump, aiming at bringing solutions in- and outside of the box.

Yours truly was part of the round table panel addressing the same subject. My fellow panel members were Edouard Baijo, MW and International Luxury Director at E & J Gallo born in the Champagne region, and Eric Fèvre, independent wineshop (Millésimes & Saveurs) owner in Reims and regular finalist in the “meilleur caviste de France’ competition.
Each of us was supposed to point out potential causes for the declining sales, and suggest possible solutions, which would be the basis of a debate among ourselves first, and then with the audience. The debate started earlier – partially provoked by arguments given by this reporter that seemed to rub up the audience the wrong way – and prevented us from presenting solutions due to time constraints.

The discussion started with an overview of the sparling wine market- where all three of us acknowledged the steady decline of champagne which has been largely offset by growing demand for other sparkling wines. Edouard stated that sparkling wine sales decreased overall in all mature markets but that opportunities remained in developing markets. While his explanation holds true for champagne, it is not really applicable to other sparkling wines. For instance, Prosecco sales exceeded 660 million bottles for the first time, and its largest market, the US, posted a 17% year on year sales increase in the first 10 months of the year compared to 2023. Crémant sales increased by 5.9% compared to 2023, and sales in the UK increased by 9.1% in the first 10 months of the year according to Nielsen. Cava sales decreased by 13.4% in 2024, but this was due to de supply shortage rather than decreasing demand. In fact, the appellation had to cap its sales to major markets such as Germany, the UK and the US to develop developing markets like Japan (up by 4.7%). In France