Introducing the most comprehensive champagne market report this century!
The story of champagne is more than vineyards, cellars and families – its evolution across the vast sweep of history has always been inextricably tied to its acceptance and adoration across its diverse markets. More than any other region, champagne production is linked to its sales. Even its authorised annual harvest yields are set stringently according to projected demand. To see the future of champagne, take a long and focused look at its markets today.
My home in Australia is about as far from Champagne as it is possible to live, and I make it my aspiration not only to get under the surface of the region itself, but to embed myself in the rapidly evolving place of champagne across the vast and volatile world of wine.
We are witnesses to a steady march toward a new and dramatic champagne world order this millennium, and no year has exemplified this more emphatically than 2019.
At the current moment, with more than half of the world’s population beginning to emerge from lockdown in the intensifying fight against coronavirus, it might seem that champagne’s sales in the first two decades of the new millennium are now completely inconsequential. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. I am convinced that champagne’s market performance, culminating in 2019, now bears a profound and new significance.
The world order that we took for granted just a few short months ago seems a distant memory in the wake of ‘the ceaseless showreel of calamity and disaster that now passes for everyday life,’ as one UK retailer poignantly observed. As a premium category and the universal symbol of celebration, the impact on champagne of the coronavirus pandemic is particularly acute, with sales since the beginning of the crisis down 75 percent year on year, according to Jean-Marie Barillère, president of the Union des Maisons de Champagne and co-president of the Comité Champagne.
