Champagne shipments must increase to avoid ‘disaster’

As we move into the important last four months of the year, when a disproportionately large proportion of all Champagne sales are still made, the outlook continues to be fairly gloomy for luxury fizz. db‘s Champagne correspondent Giles Fallowfield crunches the numbers.

Shipments in the eight months to the end of August declined by 1.8% on the already low figure achieved in the same period of 2024, to 145m bottles. If that slow rate of sales continued in the final third of 2025 (72.5m each four-month period), annual shipments wouldn’t even reach 220 million bottles, which would be a disaster for the Champenois.

We know that typically a disproportionately large percentage of sales are made in final quarter of the year and the MAT figure shows shipments of 269.2m in the 12 months to the end of August 2025 (Sept 24-Aug 25), but even that level represents a fall on last year’s annual volume 271.3m and at the moment the trend is largely in the wrong direction.

August was a particularly difficult month with shipments down by 6.7% on August 2024 levels and only 15.3m bottles shipped. This poor monthly performance is largely explained by a sharp decline in the French domestic market of 8.4% with only 6.1 million bottles sold there.

Export markets generally held up slightly better, with a 5.5% drop versus August 2024 levels to 9.1 million bottles.

EU offers some hope

There is a disparity too between shipments to the traditional markets within Europe and those further afield, like the USA and Japan, the two most significant, both in terms of volume and value. Against the long-term trend, exports to third countries were down in August by 7.4% while markets within the EU were marginally up by 0.7%.

In the longer term, over the first eight months, the French domestic market is down 4.8% to 56.7 million bottles while overall exports are broadly stable at 88.4 million bottles, a tiny rise of 0.2%. Exports to Europe were slightly down (2.1%) while those to markets further afield were up 1.2% (63.7 million bottles).

The important UK market has, of course, moved, in terms of gathering statistics, from within Europe to be counted among ‘third countries’. As the UK has been doing relatively well, at least in volume terms, with the amount shipped in the first eight months rising by 3.9%, this has helped make the ‘third country’ figure (for shipments outside Europe) look better still. But in the currently highly competitive UK market, value has dropped by 7.6% in the first eight months, as the deep discounting in the off-trade continues to be a feature.

Summer drop-off

The top 15 export markets show a similar trend, while volume is up 6.5%, value is only ahead 0.7%, in the first eight months of 2025. However, after consistent month-on-month volume and value growth in the first six months of 2025, the top 15 export markets saw both value and volume fall in July and August, which would be a worrying trend should it continue.

Within Champagne’s three ‘families’, predictably, in a difficult market, the houses are faring best, between them accounting for three-quarters of the 145 million bottles shipped, some 108.3 million bottles, a decline of only 0.4%. The co-ops have lost ground with their combined shipments down 6.7% to 11.9 million bottles in the first eight months of 2025. Wine growers also experienced a downturn of 5.1% to 24.8 million bottles. These falls are partly explained as both these two sectors rely more heavily on French domestic sales.

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