CHAMPAGNE SALES SINK 18% IN 2020

Last year wasn’t a good year for drinking Champagne, and now there are numbers to prove it: Worldwide, 245 million bottles of bubbly were sold last year, an 18 percent drop year on year, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

"The closure of the most important places of consumption and purchase, as well as the cancellation of numerous events has weighed on the industry," said the French producers' association Comite Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne.

The French market had been shrinking even before the coronavirus pandemic, and the three main export markets - the United States, Britain and Japan - have seen declines of more than 20 percent.

However, the association says these trends are counteracted by the relative resilience of the markets in continental Europe: Belgium, Germany and Switzerland all saw decreases on a smaller scale.

Production has been adjusted accordingly, says the association's co-president Maxime Toubart, with winegrowers and other players able to make decisions regarding yields as early as July.

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