Easter Champagne sales drop “significantly”

Easter-time sales of Champagne have “fallen back significantly” in UK retailers, while sparking wine enjoys continued growth, according to figures released yesterday by Nielsen.

Champagne sales in the four weeks to Easter were down over 5% compared to the same period last year

Having considered Easter sales trends for all drinks categories in the UK off-trade, the data analyst showed that Champagne was the worst performer, with a 5.1% decline in value sales compared to the same period in 2015.

The results from Nielsen ScanTrack covering the four weeks to Saturday 26 March this year recorded sales of £9.9m, around £500,000 less than last year, but still greater than the £9.3m achieved in 2013 during the same four-week period.

Commenting on the decline, Nielsen stated, “Easter is certainly not showing evidence of premiumisation within Champagne which is something we did see at Christmas.”

Meanwhile, commenting on the sales development in the sparkling wine sector, Nielson noted, “When looking at Easter performance over the last few years for total wine we can see that only sparkling has consistently performed year-on-year, with the latest year at £28.6m [compared to £15.7m in 2012].”

Source: Nielsen ScanTrack to 26.03.16

“This in itself is not particularly telling as sparkling wine as a market has been in strong double digit growth for the latest 3 years.”

However, still wine is down 2.8% on the previous year, prompting Nielsen to point out that Easter is “a declining period”.

The UK retail market for wine has fallen to £219m in the two weeks to Easter Sunday this year compared to £227m in 2012.

From a total market perspective wine (including sparkling and Champagne) had been in growth for 2014 and 2015 due to sparkling’s strength, however the declines in Champagne and wine have dragged performance down by -0.8% compared to Easter 2015.

Considering overall FMCG sales in UK retailers, Nielsen data showed that value sales were down 2% in the four weeks to 26.03.16, but shoppers spent 5.3% more on Easter related items: Easter eggs, sparkling wine, chocolate novelties, cut flowers and Easter decorations.

‘Total liquor’ slightly declined Easter on Easter (-0.4% in value terms), meaning that it actually performed better than total FMCG.

Preventing the overall retail alcohol market from falling further was the strong performance in sparkling wine, noted above, as well as beer, which enjoyed a boost in value sales due to sports events, such as England’s 6 Nations Grand Slam victory.