Brits thirsty for Champagne but at what price?
The US may remain Champagne’s most lucrative export destination, but the UK has proved to be a reliable market in terms of volume this year, reports Giles Fallowfield.
The UK’s love affair with Champagne – the wine, rather than the place (though that too is finally taking off as a desirable short-stay destination) – continues to flourish. Having ousted Germany as the leading export market by volume back in the early 1990s, the country now vies with the US for this accolade.
Not in terms of value, of course, because, unlike the US, in the UK a considerable slice of the market is accounted for by ‘own brands’ or own label. However, the increasingly volatile international picture has undermined the economic confidence Champagne usually needs in order to flourish.
Shipments of Champagne to the US may be in free-fall since President Trump’s tariffs were imposed in August, but even in hard times, it seems the British love affair with sparkling wine from this part of northern France remains remarkably resilient. Whether we are celebrating success, marking a significant event or anniversary, or just looking for a cheering glass of bubbles, it seems it is Champagne, and not other sparkling wines, however good they may be, that we turn to.
After a fairly poor performance in 2024 that saw shipments to the UK fall to 23.3 million bottles, their lowest level since before the millennium (bar 2020’s Covid-hit volumes of 21.27m bottles, and in 2000, when the figure was distorted by a large post-millennium stock overhang), there are now solid signs of recovery in terms of volumes shipped.
James Simpson MW, head of the UK’s Champagne Shippers’ Association, is quite bullish about the UK market, with “sales looking pretty positive both month-by-month and year-to-date” (shipments to the UK were up in volume in five of the first eight months of the year, though only up in value in two), and he believes that, by the year end, “we may see growth of about 8%–10%”. This could see the UK match or even overtake the US to become the number one export destination for Champagne, with shipments of around 24m bottles, he predicts.
“The UK figures are surprisingly positive – with sales up [to the end of September] not only in the month but also year-to-date and on a rolling 12month basis. And the rate of sale does appear to be growing pretty well,” says Simpson. “Globally, despite significant concerns and economic challenges, it seems that total Champagne will end up at about 270m bottles [the same as in 2024].”
The latest overall Champagne shipment figures to the end of October 2025 show a decline in volume of 1.3% to 199.6m bottles, with total exports down just 0.1% to 121.8m bottles, while the French domestic market, still Champagne’s largest, is down 3.2% to 77m bottles.
In line with Simpson’s predictions, for the same period (January-October 2025), the UK is showing volume growth of 8.2%. While these most recent Comité Champagne statistics don’t include value, we do have the UK figure for value in the first 10 months of the year, and it’s down slightly by 2%, with the average bottle price falling by 9.4%. In comparison, the top 15 export markets show overall volume growth up 3.5%, but value falling 1.9% and average prices down 5.2% (year to the end of October).
Own label resurgence
In the UK market, MAT volume growth may have picked up, but relative value is falling, and these figures are revealing in that they clearly point to the current resurgence of the own label sector. When production costs in Champagne rocketed from 2020 onwards, making life very difficult for the discounters to operate successfully, lack of supply in large part dictated a decline in own label sales in the UK’s supermarkets. However, slowing international demand, coupled with more generous harvests, led to a significant increase in stocks held in the cellars of Reims and Epernay.
This stock excess, coupled with weaker recent export and domestic demand, plus some understandable consumer resistance to paying increased retail prices, has, almost inevitably, led to at least a short-term resurgence in activity at the lower end of the market, where own label rules.
As db reported earlier in the year, in the 2024 calendar year, own label Champagne held a 26% share of the UK off-trade by volume and 19.2% by value, with volume growth in that year of 26.6%, and value growth up 11.4%.
Recent AC Nielsen figures for the off-trade (MAT to 6 September 2025) show own label volume share has grown to 32.6%, while it has a 22% value share. To give some idea of scale, Moët &
Chandon’s volume share of the UK off-trade market (MAT to 6 September 2025) is put at 9.3%, and its value share at 13.5% (down 4.7% by volume, but only 3.7% by value). Nielsen valued the total off-trade Champagne market (MAT to 6 September 2025) at £342m, which is up 0.6% in value, slightly behind the 1.4% volume growth.
Driving footfall
The UK market is growing, but value is not rising at the same pace as volume, and this is largely down to the major grocers, who have returned to discounting Champagne as a means of driving footfall and competing with rival sparkling wines from other regions.
As one industry insider commented: “On the basis that consumers would spend more at the end of any month, immediately after they were paid, the supermarket deals used to mainly operate then to encourage this spend. But now tactical discounting can take place at any time, at short notice, when a grocer just feels their market share is slipping or to help drive other marketing campaigns.”
In mid-November it was Asda that entered the fray all guns blazing, using the grocers’ much favoured ‘double bubble’ discount plan, which saw individual single-bottle discounts amplified by a simultaneous 25% off six-bottle purchases. This sees Taittinger and Lanson, where the single-bottle brut NV price has been cut by £8.98 and £12.97 respectively to a discounted price of £34 for Taittinger Brut Réserve and £30 for Lanson Le Black Création, fall to six-bottle price levels of just £25.50 and £22.50. That’s a saving of just over £120 on a six-bottle case of Lanson.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, after less than a week of discounting, Lanson registerd as ‘out of stock’ on Asda’s website.
Asda’s least expensive own label Champagne offering at the time of writing, Henri Cachet Brut, is priced at £15.44 and can be purchased using the 25% deal at just £11.58 a bottle, a price level we haven’t seen for any Champagne for quite a while.
On the cards
Sainsbury’s, which has been very actively discounting wine and Champagne almost monthly using its now favoured Nectar store card mechanism, was already offering a similar dual discount, but upped its game once the Asda deals broke cover. Sainsbury’s nearly matched Asda on Lanson Le Black Création, with a single-bottle price £1 higher at £31, and did manage to match the £45 price offered by Asda for Bollinger. Sainsbury’s least expensive Champagne at the time of writing was Pol Guyot and new line Carré-Perseval, both priced at £19.50, which with the 25% discount comes down to £14.62. The latter, sourced from Champenoise des Grands Vins, is made by the very experienced Fabien Henry, which means it’s likely to be very decent – and may turn out to be the favoured vehicle for a big pre-Christmas price cut, if the grocer goes for such a strategy, which some feel is on the cards this year.
Over the water: trading conditions in the UK look rosier than in France or the US
For vintage Champagne from the big houses, you can choose between 2013 Lanson that’s impressively fresh and lively at £51 (no discount; £38.25 six-bottle price), Veuve Clicquot 2015 – a big, ripe, sunny vintage, down from £69 to £62 (£46.50 six-bottle price) and Moët Grand Vintage 2016, reduced in price from £66 to £55 (£41.25 six-bottle price).
Tesco is also running ‘buy six bottles save 25%’ deals via its Clubcard, and at the time of writing a dozen of these are of the ‘double bubble’ variety. It matches Sainsburys on the Moët vintage (£55 a bottle) and also has Bollinger at £45. Its best deal is the Lanson 2013 vintage, discounted to £44 for a single bottle and thus £33 on the six-bottle deal.
On the own label front, Tesco has two candidates already lined up for serious price cuts in the shape of discount favourite Louis Delaunay and Gartissier Brut, both at £15.50 and thus available for just £11.62 at the six-bottle rate, which is 4p more than Asda’s cheapest offering. Morrisons has also joined the fray with its save 25% More Card price, and it has eight own label Champagnes on offer at the time of writing, so plenty of opportunities to go for the big pre-Christmas discount if it chooses to do so.
Waitrose doesn’t tend to do ‘double bubble’ discounts, but introduced a ‘25% off six bottles’ deal in late November.
Previously, it had offered Heidsieck Monopole at a single bottle price of £24, with its own label Charles Lecouvey Champagne one-third off at £20, and Piper-Heidsieck cut by £11 to £29. But it abandoned these single-bottle deals for the ‘25% off six’ offer.
Widespread discounting
What do Champagne producers feel about such widespread discounting? Julien Lonneux, CEO at Vranken-Pommery UK, takes the pragmatic view that “in the last six to seven weeks of the year, very little Champagne is sold at full price. Consumers will always find a brand they like on promotion. Even very loyal customers of one brand could end up buying another in store.”
However, not all producers are as sanguine. Billecart-Salmon UK managing director Chris Crosby says: “Discounting might create short-term volume spikes, but it can quickly destroy the trust built with our loyal clients – and that’s why Billecart-Salmon does not play that game.”
The real strength of the UK right now, he says, “is that the premium on-trade is pulling the conversation back to craftsmanship, provenance and drinking better. Consumers are making more deliberate choices – not just buying what’s cheapest.”
Premium on-trade
According to Crosby, the premium London on-trade is having one of its best periods in years. “Guests are trading up and engaging with cuvées like Le Blanc de Blancs, Le Sous Bois and vintage Champagne,” he says. “The city’s leading restaurants and hotels continue to act as trend-setters, and that influence radiates across the country, although outside London the picture is more mixed.” Over at Laurent-Perrier, which has recently picked up the pouring business at The Evolv Collection (formerly D&D London), which owns and operates 20 restaurants across London, Manchester, Birmingham, Paris and New York, UK brand director Danny Brennan is also feeling positive about the on-trade.
“In particular, we have seen sales growth across our most recently launched super-premium Champagnes: Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, Brut Millésimé 2015, and Héritage. This underlines the continued premiumisation of the Champagne category in the UK.”
Vranken-Pommery UK’s Lonneux, also sees business in the on-trade improving in the second half of the year, despite CGA data suggesting that sales were down 6% in volume and 2% in value in the first half of 2025. But Lonneux sees the picture in the UK as “pretty positive”, especially when compared to the two other largest markets, France and the US, the first being down 3.2% in volume, while the US languishes at just +1.3% in volume to the end of October.
As one of Lonneux’s competitors says: “Champagne is the drink of celebration that people turn to at this time of year, whether it’s for gifting or enjoying with the family at home. It’s lodged in the British psyche.”
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