Cass Anderson
Champagne sales have plummeted over the past year with a 15.2% drop in sales from this time last year. This is particularly concerning given that Summer is peak bubbly drinking season with endless weddings, graduation celebrations, favorable outdoor drinking weather, and countless other reasons.
During a quarterly earnings call, the CFO of LVMH (Moët et Chandon, Dom Perignon, Louis Vuitton, etc) spoke about the global dip in Champagne sales and speculated at the underlying reasons that are potentially causing the declining earnings.
Jean-Jacques Guiony said on the earnings call “Champagne is quite linked with celebration, happiness, et cetera. Maybe the current global situation, be it geopolitical or macroeconomic, does not lead people to cheer up and to open bottles of Champagne. I don’t really know.” Guiony added “I don’t really know. The matter of fact is, is that our volumes are down double digit.”
He declined to elaborate any further on what he meant by the ‘global situation’ and if that was referring to civil unrest, inflation, war, or what. But the chairman of Champagne Houses lobby, David Chatillon, expanded on that further in a statement to Fox Business.
Chatillon’s statement reads “The gloomy global geopolitical and economic situation, as well as generalized inflation, is weighing on household consumption. Champagne also continues to suffer the consequences of overstocking by retailers in 2021 and 2022.” There are, of course, potentially other reasons causing the dip in champagne.
Consider, for a moment, that Gen Z is drinking considerably less than previous generations. A study on alcohol abstinence found 28% of Gen Z doesn’t drink while that number was 20% sixteen years prior. That’s just one contributing factor, of course.
Inflation is certainly contributing. As the cost of quite literally everything has risen the amount of expendable income has shrank for most and a luxury good like ‘champagne’ won’t make the list of ‘necessities’ over most items.
One thing is for certain, they will not be able to turn to Jay-Z to save the industry after his infamous rift with Cristal years ago:
In an article on Fortune, Sean Goldsmith does posit the theory that with the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election on the horizon “folks might be waiting to pop their champagne.” That’s not a bad theory but it appears to be in Europe where sales are being hit the hardest according to various reports.
Are people drinking less champagne or drinking less of everything?
iStockphoto / SeventyFour
It’s worth taking a step back and considering that it’s not just the champagne industry that is getting pummeled. A report from back in May claimed that wine consumptions is at the “lowest level of consumption since 1996 when 2 billion fewer people roamed the earth.” Meaning the global population is 2 billion more now but the world is drinking as much wine now as it was back then.
Personally, I’m drinking more wine than ever. I rarely write about wine here at BroBible and would love to do more of that. I’ve been drinking a ton of Captain Fantasy from Carini Wines in Nor-Cal, Merlots from Carini, and various Valpolicella Amarones as I fall harder and harder for Italian wines. But the data says I’m an outlier so that’s neither here nor there.
It is difficult to point to one specific contributing factor as what’s causing people to drink less Champagne. But the powers that be should consider taking action before the world moves on from bubbly due to rising bottle prices. Ironically, writing this article up has made me want to pop a bottle so I might call it quits early today and celebrate for the sake of celebrating.