Is Champagne losing its fizz?
Is Champagne losing its fizz?
An uneventful International Champagne Day raises questions
On October 25th, it was International Champagne Day – and for the first time in thirteen years, I completely missed it. I do not mean, I was not here, or I did not celebrate – which indeed I didn’t – but I just did not know it was International Champagne Day. And there was little out there to remind me about the event – no articles on major wine sites, no press releases, and too little social media coverage for me to realize till after the event. I dee see some Instagram posts last week, generally posted by Champagne producers, many of whom seemed to have added the #champagneday hash tag as an afterthought when crooning about the tenth La Fête du Champagne events in New York. Going back through older emails, I realized that the US Champagne Bureau had elaborated on the upcoming event in a mail sent October 15th but (mea culpa) I had not opened the email till doing some research for this piece – thus well after the Champagne Day event.
As part of the same research, a quick Instagram search revealed fewer than 100 mentions of the #champagneday2024 or #champagneday24 tags – on par with last year, but five times less than tags used in 2022. Moreover, the generic #champagneday tag is hardly an Instagram record breaker, as apparently it has been used only 70,500 times since people started sharing their champagne day experiences more than a decade ago. Facebook data is even more sobering: 32k mentions of the #champagneday hashtags (total of all the years) and only a handful of posts (at least public posts) using the #champagneday2024 or #champagneday24 hashtag. While I am sure there must have been several Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat mentions, I cannot shake the feeling that International Champagne Day – a bit like the beverage at its origin – has lost some of its original allure.
While there is no denying that the overall decline in wine consumption, driven by generation Z and millennials, has undoubtably stumped the lack of social media interest in Champagne Day, a plethora of data shows the sparkling wine market continues to outperform its’ still wine counterparts. IWSR’s “Where next for the US Sparkling wine market?” overview, published in February 2024, predicts further growth in the US sparkling wine consumption driven by “an expanding base of increasingly engaged consumers making more frequent purchases in the category.” However, it seems consumers are looking for “new sparkling wines, rather than sticking to what they know.” This could be why another report, published by OhBev in October 2024, talks about a steady decline in interest in champagne (“8.2% in 2023, and further decline this year”), while interest in prosecco and cava continues to grow. The report states “This trend reflects consumers' desire for affordable luxury and versatility in sparkling wine options.” Before blaming the inflation for the findings from the OhBev report, with the claim that US consumers are less willing to spend a premium on wine, it pays to analyze the BMO 2024 Wine Market report, which clearly shows that consumers have been trading up in their wine purchases.
All of this points, in my opinion, to the fact that NV(non-vintage) champagne has lost its dazzle in the eye of many a sparkling wine drinker, who according to yet another IWSR study, are looking for quality and real sustainability – two indicators which have been proven to be mere lip service for too many Champenois. It is therefore not surprising that there seems to be a decreasing interest in events such as International Champagne Day. Today, it is often not the word “champagne” anymore which has people believe they are tasting the stars; instead, it is the name of the (star) producer and/or the cuvee (prestige) that brings a sparkle to the champagne drinker’s eye. La Fête du Champagne is a great example of this. The glitzy milestone anniversary featured an impressive line-up of 45 star-studded producers, 5 of which were exclusive cuvee prestige brands (Dom Perignon, Krug, Rare, Salon, La Grande Dame). In fact, the website brands them “Superstar Houses and Estates”. The champagne pairing lunches and dinners, organized around the main tasting event, were dreams come through for the wealthy champagne lovers in attendance, as they provided a truly unique once in a life-time experience. The price tags associated to these very coveted – and sold out – tickets, clearly show that for the top-tier wines, money remains an afterthought.
However, Champagne’s delicate balance on which the thriving of the whole region depends, sits almost completely outside this thriving prestigious niche market. Instead, it is solely constructed on the NV cuvees, the ones that continue to lose ground to alternatives in the sparkling wine market. And according to a FranceAgrimer study published in July this year, there is no shortage of said alternatives. Between 2002 and 2022, the sparkling wine production grew by 60% to attain 4 billion bottles in 2022. During the same period, still wine only saw its market share increase by 2.7% which resulted in sparkling wine expanding its position in the total wine market, where it increased by 4.2 percentage points (from 7.5% in 2002 to 11.7% in 2022) in the two-decade period. Zooming in on the data reveals that growth accelerated between 2017 and 2022, and from other studies it is likely this growth continued along the same curve in the last 2 years.
During this period, champagne sales have declined steadily – when averaging out the 2020, 2021 and 2022 sales which were distorted due to the Covid crisis. Looking at the figures in this way, shows that over the last 5 years they have decreased by just under 10%; a loss of 32.7 million bottles between the 307.4 million bottles in 2017 to 274.7 million bottles in 2024 (MAT October 2023-September2024). And while monthly sales slightly improved (by 2% equaling about 200,000 bottles) for the first time in 18 months, it is worth pointing out they had decreased by 21% in September 2023. October – an important sales month - will be able to shed more light on whether champagne is really rebounding, or if September was just a lucky blip. In the latter case, the real question will be if NV champagne will be able to claw back its previous market share anytime soon, if not, there will be a lot of hardship for a lot of people in the region.
So far, the official instances have brushed over the issue and have largely gotten away with. Nonetheless, the upcoming cahier des charges changes, which are yet another clear step in the wrong direction from an ecological and even economic standpoint, show how deeply most Champenois (or at least the growers) believe in the region’s uncontested sparkling wine superiority. However, the lackluster enthusiasm for International Champagne Day and NV Champagne shows real change is needed and quickly, if they want to curb their fall from grace.