
2024 wasn’t a terrific year for Champagne – but it was a great one for sparkling wine, and specifically for Crémant. According to The Times, on December 23rd, Champagne was on track for its worst year of sales in 20 years – expecting to sell 270m bottles compared with 299m in 2023 and 325m in 2022. And although higher value cuvées saw UK sales value climb by 8.1%, sales volumes dropped by 18% to the EU, and 13.5% into the UK.
If supermarket shelves stacked with discounted bottles of Champagne have become a familiar sight, explained Thibault Lavergne, owner of wholesale company Wine Story, it is due to an unfortunate series of events.
“When the market for Champagne in the US, China and Europe was booming 20 years ago, the big Champagne houses and the professional lobbies argued to extend the zone of production to make more Champagne.”
As the application, planting and production process took the best part of 15 years, “suddenly, around two years ago, there was a lot more Champagne on the market. By coincidence, this happened in parallel with the drop of the Chinese and European markets. So some Champagne houses tried to do massive cuts, which of course had an effect on the whole market.”
Meanwhile, the cost-of-living crisis has led consumers to consider alternative options, like Crémant. Hailed as the “sparkling hero of 2024” by The Drinks Business, sales of the traditional method French sparkling rose by 9.1% in the first ten months of 2024, according to research firm Nielsen. Cécile Lavaux, whose wholesale company Les Producteurs et Vignerons de France works with a Crémant de Limoux producer, said recent years have seen significant growth in its sales of Crémant, up roughly 20% year-on-year for the past two years. As well as the ‘value’ element contributing to its success – with Crémant costing much less than Champagne, sometimes by a factor of 10– there has been an education piece, too. “Consumers seem to have much more understanding of what Crémant means,” she said. “Even if they don’t really understand how it’s made or the intricacies – that it comes from different regions, or uses different grapes – they know it is a quality sparkling wine that’s an equivalent to Champagne.”
For Lavergne, the best advice for retailers is to offer quality sparkling wines within a £20-£35 bracket. “Choose a good independent small producer from whatever region. It could be a pet’ nat’ for customers who like a bit more of an organic style but normal sparkling with decent, modern packaging like Champagne, and in fact Prosecco have. A lot of consumers will not see the difference, and you can tell them that it’s better to buy some of the best sparkling than the cheapest Champagne.”
This article first appeared in the January-February 2025 issue of Fine Food Digest.
This article first appeared in the January-February 2025 issue of Fine Food Digest.