Champagne shipments fall 9% in 2024

Total Champagne shipments in 2024 are expected to fall to around the 271m bottle mark. This is some 28m bottles, or 9.4% down, on the 299m bottles shipped in 2023, which was itself a drop of 8.2% or 26.5m bottles on the total (325.5m) taken by all markets in 2022. The total number of Champagne shipments from France marks the second consecutive year of declines.

The projected figure for 2024, while positive, is in fact lower than expected, with the drinks business previously reporting over 300m sales in previous years. This is in line with the 10% fall in the market to the end of November 2024, according to analysis, though back in July when the yields for the 2024 harvest were set, they were predicting a volume of around 290m.

Despite the declines, the association’s co-president David Chatillon reiterated that Champagne is a “solid, sustainable organisational model that has proved its value, even in the face of adversity, which gives it confidence in the future.”

As the table below (displaying total volume of shipments annually from 2024-1999) shows, the all-time high of 333.8m bottles shipped was achieved in 2007.

While total volume Champagne sales have been falling in the UK – they dropped 13.5% in the first nine months of 2024 – at the same time value rose by 8.1%, according to AC Nielsen MAT figures.

And as we exit the crucial final trading period – around 40% of total Champagne sales are made in the last eight weeks of the year and around 25% in the final three weeks – volume was only down 1.2% and value 0.5% in the ten months to 1^st November (Nielsen). These figures suggest the UK is performing much more strongly than the rest of Europe, where shipments overall fell 18% (Jan-Sept) and in France where they dropped 10.1% in the first nine months.

The 2024 figures demonstrate how Champagne, having quickly recovered from the shock of the 2020 health crisis, has remained in the hearts and minds of global consumers.