2023 Champagne shipments down 8.2%, 'as expected'

By James Bayley

Published: 15 January, 2024

Le Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (CIVC), the organisation grouping the actors of Champagne production and trade, has revealed that total Champagne shipments in 2023 were down 8.2% to 299m bottles.

The dip follows three consecutive years of growth and marks a return to pre-Covid shipment levels. With 297m bottles shipped in 2019, sales had fallen the following year by 18% during the pandemic and then bounced back by 33% in the following two years to reach over 325m bottles by the end of 2022.

In 2023, France was down by 8.2% with 127m bottles. The domestic market suffered more from inflation compared to export markets, which weighed on household budgets throughout last year.

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Exports are also down 8.2% from 2022, with 172m bottles, but are well above 2019 levels (156m bottles) – and now account for more than 57% of total sales, compared to 45% 10 years ago. The overstocking by distributors, for fear of shortages in 2022, partly explains the decline between 2022 and 2023 results.

Despite the drop in volume, the increase in value for cuvées, especially within the export markets, has enabled the appellation to maintain its sales above €6bn.

Maxime Toubart, president of the Syndicat Général des Vignerons and co-president of the Comité Champagne said: “I welcome this return to market stability. Champagne is a protected appellation produced within a delimited area and governed by strict rules that make it impossible to sustain strong growth in volume over the long term.”

David Chatillon, president of the Union des Maisons de Champagne and co-president of the Comité Champagne, added: “The decline was to be expected – but with the value maintained, Champagne is still optimistic for the future, whilst remaining sensitive to the geopolitical context and the state of the global economy.”

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