Asda offers £12 Champagne as part of ‘Markle sparkle’ promo

Asda has launched a promotional deal for its own-label sparkling wines ahead of the Royal Wedding, dubbed the ‘Markle Sparkle’, that includes a £5 Prosecco and a Champagne for just £12 a bottle.

The cut price fizz will be available in the run up to the wedding for one week only, starting today, with the UK set to see hundreds of street party celebrations take place across the country on 19 May.

Shoppers will be able to purchase the supermarket’s Yellow Label Prosecco for £5, and its own-label Henri Cachet Champagne Brut for just £12.

Sean Aitken, Asda Champagne and sparkling buyer, said: “With the nation preparing to enjoy the upcoming Royal Wedding, we want to give customers the chance to stock-up on some award-winning fizz to help celebrate the day.

“The Champagne featured in our Markle Sparkle promotion, the Henri Cachet Champagne Brut, is the perfect bottle to pop open with friends and family this weekend, with this fruity, crisp tipple reduced by a third – making it one of the cheapest Champagnes available for the Royal Wedding.”

In the week running-up to the Royal Wedding, Asda predicts sale of over £4.8m worth of sparkling wines.

While shoppers will be happy to get a good deal, it’s another example of deep discounting of wines at supermarkets, which has seen the prive of Champagne in particular driven down to below cost prices.

The knock on effect for the category has long been a topic of debate among the trade. Previously, the former managing director of Nicolas Feuillatte, Julie Campos, called deep discounting of Champagne in supermarkets “suicidal”. While last year it was predicted that sales of Prosecco would surpass 412 million bottles by 2020, as the Italian sparkling “takes over from discounted Champagne”, according to Vinexpo CEO, Guillaume Deglise, based on findings from a biennial study by Vinexpo and the IWSR into global wine and spirits trends.

The practice of deep discounting has, however, slowed in recent years. Reacting to news that that shipments of Champagne to the UK during 2016 had dropped by 3 million bottles, the chairman of the UK Champagne Agents Association, Andrew Hawes, who is also managing director of Mentzendorff, the UK importer and distributor for Bollinger, said this was due to a reduction in sales of discounted, exclusive-label Champagne through the supermarkets, which, he explained, was in line with the decision by the grocers to do fewer “high-low sales promotions”.

“We could lose shipment volumes again [in 2017], because the supermarkets are really getting out of the high-low promotions, and promotions on top of promotions, and as a long term trend, this is a good thing,” he said.

The official 2017 export figure was 307.3m bottles, which represents a growth of 0.4% compared to 2016, when shipments were 306m.

The Royal Wedding in numbers:-

• 16,000 glasses of Champagne
• 28,000 canapes
• 1,000 waiters
• 800 official guests
• 200,000 flowers and 60 florists
• 52,750 British pubs with extended opening hours
• 8,000 street parties