Has Champagne become too expensive?

When considering the reasons for the declining demand for Champagne over the past two years, some blame price increases. So has this high-end fizz become too expensive?

That was one among many questions I put to the Champenois during a week-long stay in the region at the start of the year, and the responses were mixed, with some blaming falling sales on price rises, while others claimed it only had a small part to play.

The reason for considering this topic now is because it has become apparent that Champagne has lost almost 55 million bottles in global shipments since 2022, meaning that, in the words of Pol Roger president, Laurent d’Harcourt, “In two years, the region has gone back to what it was selling 20 years ago.”

He’s referring to the fact that global shipments dropped from 326 million bottles in 2022 to 299m in 2023, and then from 299m to 271m in 2024 – the lowest total since 2001, when the region shipped 263m bottles (that is, if we ignore the anomalous Covid-lockdown driven decline to 245m in 2020).

Meanwhile, since Champagne’s recent high-point, when demand soared as Covid-related restrictions eased – and the fizz moved from a position of excess to short-term scarcity – prices of the product have risen markedly: by approximately 25% since 2022. (see table, bottom, for UK retail pricing evolution)

This isn’t due to profiteering on the producer’s part, but a result of rising costs – chief among which has been the price of grapes, which are now averaging over €7 per kilogram, with each bottle needing at least 1.2kg of grapes.

But it’s not only the raw material that has gone up in price, but energy, wages, dry goods, and interest rates – the latter having a marked effect on the cost of production, as the Champagne hold a lot of stock for ageing – 15 months by law, but for any quality-minded producer, it’s a minimum of two years (and that’s for non-vintage).

This means that for those who have to finance stock – which represents the majority of producers – they are paying interest on the cash spent on making the Champagne for some time before they sell it.

As a result, your average bottle of Brut NV Champagne has gone up by around €10 in terms of retail price, off-promotion, which is a significant rise in a short space of time – between 2022 and last year.

This has meant that Champagne is now routinely over €40 a bottle, or £40 in the UK.

“No one wants to talk about prices, but the price of Champagne has gone up 20-25% in three years, and that’s the reason for the decline [in sales],” said Charles Philipponnat of Champagne Philipponnat.

Similarly, Sebastien Briend, sales and marketing director at Champagne Jacquart, told db, “Obviously one cannot avoid the [rising] price of Champagne, which is one of the reasons why sales of Champagne are down – the prices are higher, and that meant, for some consumers, they bought less Champagne.”

Continuing he recorded, “Brutal price increases have never been good for Champagne.”

Similarly, as recorded by our US contributor, Kathleen Willcox, wine retailers in the US are blaming a downturn in Champagne sales on the fact the fizz has got more expensive.

“Sales were down last year for a simple reason that some of the big companies just want to ignore, and that is price increases,” says Gary Westby, Champagne buyer for California’s rare and fine wine retailer, K&L Wine Merchants. “With a soft wine market in general, customers are not interested in big price jumps, and that showed through in our sales.”

Meanwhile, Ruinart CEO Frédéric Dufour made the point that “It’s difficult to increase your prices unless you are very strong brand”.

He also noted that in the French market – which is the region’s largest – “€40 [for a bottle of Brut NV Champagne] is a barrier for a lot of consumers, and the type of consumer who was buying from a good maison at €30-35 is now buying other categories: sparkling and non-sparkling.”

As several producers noted, it’s at the cheaper end of the Champagne spectrum where consumers tend to be most price sensitive – and this is also where the largest volumes of Champagne sales are concentrated, by which I mean Brut Non-Vintage labels sold in multiple retailers.

Such a point is made by Champagne Gardet owner, Christophe Prieux, who told db, “There was a general decrease in volume last year, and that was mainly due to decreased sales in supermarkets. The price of grapes and everything else has gone up a lot since Covid, and the customer in supermarkets is looking for low prices and very good Christmas offers, and the prices are higher, and the offers are not very good anymore.”

It’s also why, as managing director of Champagne De Saint-Gall, Pierre Desanlis records, “Last year there were some big price increases, and because the consumer is used to buying at a certain price, they waited for promotions before buying,” referring to Champagne sales on discount in supermarkets in the UK.

Despite the offers, he noted that overall volumes were still down, and that may partly be because the price of Champagne on promotion is still higher than it was on offer pre-Covid.

While it is not unusual for Champagne producers to put up prices by 1-2% each year, the issue with the recent increase has been the large and rapid nature of the hike.

As Philipponnat stressed, “What we’ve seen for the first time is actual substitution by crémant and even Prosecco, and that is only because of price… you see it here in France, and that’s because a bottle of [Brut NV] Philipponnat was €35 and now it’s €45 – it’s a steep step.”

Champagne Duval-Leroy president Julien Duval-Leroy feels similarly about the impact of price on Champagne sales last year. “We knew it was going to be difficult, because the price of grapes has been skyrocketing for the past three years now and we had to put that into the price of the bottle,” he said.

Speaking of the trade, he told db that passing on price increases to the likes of brasseries in France was a problem, noting that the aperitif moment is increasingly switching from Champagne to “a glass of rosé, beer, coke or nothing.”

Explaining the reason why Champagne is losing its key sales moment in more informal and inexpensive eateries, he said that if a restaurateur was “fighting to keep its clientele with a set menu for €20, they aren’t going to sell a coup of Champagne for €15.”

While higher-end restaurants are still offering Champagne, Duval-Leroy said that the percentage margins applied to pricier fizz was making it too expensive for all but the very few. On the other hand, he said that should they apply a fixed margin, they can still sell a lot of Champagne, before recording a high rate of sale for fine Champagne in Terre de Craie, a restaurant in Vertus, which applies a reasonable, fixed sum to all the bottles it offers guests.

More generally, he suggested that Champagne was at a crossroads. “There are two different views,” he said about the future for the region. “Either Champagne could become like white Burgundy, where there is little volume, but the value of each bottle is high.”

Continuing, he said that this would see Champagne come down in size to somewhere between 200m and 250m bottles in terms of annual shipments.

However, he added, “But that’s not my vision, which is to return to a Champagne of the past, where we sell 300m bottles or more, and please the consumer that likes to have a drink for the fun of it, not only when it is a very special occasion.”

Concluding on his comparison with Burgundy’s positioning, and making the point that he’s talking about fine village level whites from the Côte d’Or, not more affordable options from the Mâconnais, he said, “It’s a pity because I love Puligny- or Chassagne-Montrachet, but I don’t drink them any more, because they are too expensive.”

However, others see the price rises, however severe, as one of many causes of Champagne’s declining in sales, and not the most important. Indeed, chief among the reasons for Champagne’s decreasing volumes have been the removal of reasons to celebrate: Champagne was a major beneficiary in the post-Covid period of elation, but war and recession have since destroyed high spirits.

Then there’s been uncertainty due to elections, damaging sales in the UK and, especially, the USA. Further driving Champagne shipments down has been a high level of stock in the market, which affected last year in particular. Other negative influences on Champagne sales in 2024 have included falling drinks consumption generally; poor summertime weather in major European markets, such as the UK and France, as well as an increasing outlay on travel, eating into funds once used for treating oneself at home.

Cocktails have also been stealing a share of sales in restaurants when it comes to Champagne’s key consumption moment – the apéritif, according to Pol Roger president Laurent d’Harcourt.

And Laurent is one of many who draws attention to Champagne’s relative value compared to fine wine, even following price increases – which he and others are at pains to point out, are in line with general inflation.

On the latter point, Bollinger MD, Charles-Armand de Belenet stressed that Champagne is not out of line with other goods when it comes to price rises.

“A bottle of Champagne has increased by €10 on average compared to three years ago, which is about a 25% increase, which is fully in line with inflation at a global level,” he stated. Continuing, he told db, “And if you compare Champagne with other luxury goods, including those in wines and spirits, then Champagne has been reasonable, there has been no crazy price increase.”

Concluding on this topic, he said, “It is not as simple as a price increase driving a consumption decrease,” although he admitted that “the entry level of Champagne is suffering a lot, because that’s where price sensitivity is highest.”

As for whether Champagne has become too expensive, Pol Roger’s d’Harcourt told db, “I don’t think that Champagne is expensive,” basing such a view on the price of bottle of Brut NV compared to fine wines from other famous French regions. “A grand cru château in Bordeaux and Champagne were same prices 50-60 years,” he said.

In fact, thanks to the archive material at London merchant Berry Brothers & Rudd – which we featured in our 2021 Chamapgne Report – we can see that in 1950, Pol Roger Brut was priced at £1.50 per bottle, making it more expensive than Lafite (£1.10), Yquem (£1.38) and ‘Montrachet’ (£1.38).

Today, however, the same retailer is selling Pol Roger Brut Reseve for £54 a bottle, while Château Lafite Rothschold 2018, exclusive of VAT and duty, will set you back around £700, Yquem around £300, again in bond, while its cheapest Montrachet is almost £800.

Now, it should be added that Champagne is a much bigger volume business than it was in the 50s, when it was capable of producing 50-70 million bottles from a little under 12,000 hectares (compared to 315-330m today from 34,000ha).

So how does Champagne compare volume terms to say white Burgundy today? Well, it’s still more than double the total production of Bourgogne Blanc, which is around 150m bottles annually, with the village level and above whites from the Côte d’Or only a small proportion of that: Meursault, for instance, makes around 2.5m bottles annually, with a starting retail price in the UK of at least £50, and, on Berry Bros & Rudd’s website, £60.

Looking ahead, what all the Champenois appear to agree on is the need to have price consistency in 2025, following a year of declining sales – despite extensive price promotion. In other words, almost no-one in the region plans to put up prices now, which will mean eroding margins as production costs are still rising for Champagne producers.

This decision, along with what seems like an end to oversupply in the trade (it was overstocked at the start of 2024), are reasons why Champagne is expected to see a turnaround in 2025, or at least, an end to the declines.

In other words, brand owners are optimistic, believing that with time, consumers will get used to the new, higher entry-point price of Champagne, as long as there is stability during that period of adjustment (something that is threatened due to the possibility of tariffs on Champagne in the US, and, in the UK, the cost of this October’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations concerning waste packaging).

Certainly a positive outlook is held by head of the UK Champagne Shippers Association, James Simpson MW, who is also MD of Pol Roger Portfolio. Speaking to db in a recent podcast – as he gears up for April’s Definitive Champagne Tasting – prices of Champagne have reached a plateau and, even at this new higher level, look affordable next to a bottle of fine Chardonnay from the Côte d’Or.

He said, “After two years of significant price inflation, prices are now stable on Champagne, and I think we can put our hand up and say, ‘ok, it’s a little more expensive than it was, but it’s still a whole lot cheaper than white Burgundy’, and so I think Champagne still offers pretty good value.”

As for the initial question, is Champagne too expensive? One should also ask, for who? Because, as Simpson told db, certain retailers (such as The Wine Society and Berry Bros & Rudd), who serve an older and financially secure demographic, had a good year in terms of Champagne sales last year. “Don’t be frightened of what I call the grey pound,” he said, referring to “more senior drinkers”, who, he added, “Got used to drinking Champagne during the pandemic” – a habit they haven’t ditched now times have changed.

In contrast, he notes, Champagne was always too expensive for younger drinkers. Of some concern, however, is the market for those in between. “The problem is those in the mid 30s to the mid 40s, or early 50s, who are struggling with mortgages, school fees and everything else.”

Nevertheless, he reminded, “Champagne is a special occasion wine… it’s for weddings, funerals, birthdays,” and we shouldn’t expect people to be drinking it on a regular basis.

Indeed, it’s the product’s position as the drink of celebration that gives it such brand strength – particularly compared to its competition in the world of ‘other’ sparkling wines. As Simpson concludes, “Cremant is a marvellous drink, but you don’t necessarily remember the last time you opened a bottle of cremant, whereas you do remember the last time you opened a bottle of Champagne.”

Price comparison and evolution in UK retail: Champagne and Bordeaux (2000-2021 / 2021-2025)

	2000	2010	2021	2000-2021 price increase		2025	2021-’25 price increase		Vintage (2025)	Retailer
Pol Roger NV	£23.95	£33.95	£44	84%		£54	23%		NV	BBR
Pol Roger Vintage	33.95 (’90)	£49.95 (’99)	£80	136%		£94	18%		2018	BBR
Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill	£70 (’90)	£120 (’98)	£175 (’09)*	150%		£199	14%		2015	BBR
Moët NV	£21.45	£29.95	£38*	77%		£45	18%		NV	Waitrose
Dom Pérignon	£79.95 (’92)	£105 (’99)	£150 (’10)*	88%		£199	33%		2013	Waitrose
Roederer NV	£27.45	£35.95	£45	64%		£59	31%		Collection 245	BBR
Roederer Cristal	£90 (’94)	£210.40 (’00)	£200 (’13)*	122%		£260	30%		2015	BBR
Krug Grande Cuvée	£69.95	£120	£150*	114%		£182	21%		NV	BBR
Château Haut Brion (red)	£119 (’96)	£245 (’96)	£492.88 (’18)	314%		£625	27%		2022	BBR
Château Margaux	£210 (’96)	£630 (’96)	£566.68**	170%		£364	-36%		2021	BBR

Source: Berry Brothers & Rudd price lists. Data compiled by Gabriel Stone (2000-21 prices), augmented by Patrick Schmitt with 2025 prices
NB Brackets denote vintage offered.
* Waitrose Cellar price.
** Liv-ex price with duty & VAT added

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