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Champagne shipments fall 9% in 2024
Although shipments of Champagne dropped to around 271 million bottles last year, value sales in top markets climbed, reports Giles Fallowfield.
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.
While the final figures won’t be confirmed for a while and detailed country-by-country analysis is not expected until early March, the volume is going to be somewhere between 270 and 272m bottles.
This is in line with the 10% fall in the market to the end of November 2024, according to CIVC analysis, though back in July when the yields for the 2024 harvest were set, they were predicting a volume of around 290m.
Good news
Most of the major export markets lost volume with the top 15 export destinations experiencing an average decrease of 15.1%. But the good news for the Champenois is that average value in these markets is up by 2.7%, which suggests at least the long-term aim of ‘adding value’ is progressing.
However, with the first quarterly payments for the 2024 harvest due in early December, when there is the additional cost of paying for the pressing of grapes to be paid, shortage of cash encouraged fairly widespread discounting in important export markets like the UK (as reported by db last month) as the major houses sought to boost their cash flow. One other unexpected boost came with a good month for sales in France in November.
In major high value export markets like Japan, Italy and Hong Kong, volume was down 21.4%, 26.4% and 29.9%, respectively.
Although exports to the UK were only down 7.5% and average prices were up 7.4% in the first ten months of 2024 (Jan-Oct). Shipments to Mexico the 19th largest export market, fell by 42%, from the 2023 total of 1.5m bottles.
Average yields from the very difficult and rainy 2024 harvest are expected to be around the 8,400kgs/ha mark, while the permitted yield was set at 10,000kgs/ha back in July 2024, which was down on the 11,400kgs/ha agreed for 2023. However, some parts of the appellation had far lower yields, with the situation in the Côte des Bar particularly difficult.
In Champagne’s largest single cru Les Riceys, yields were as low as 2,000kgs/ha, with some small producers having nothing to pick.
For the négoce, who are contractually committed to buying grapes, where yields were decimated, they still had to make the first quarterly payment on 1 December for the volume (ie the number of hectares in the contract), whether the appellation of 10,000kgs/ha was reached or there was very little at all. And this has put further pressure on those companies less well-resourced to take such a financial hit.
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