This is good news, among the bad, for the champagne industry. It turned out that people, after all, needed festive bubbles in the challenging year of 2020. Everybody thought that there would be a 30% reduction in sales in 2020, but it turned out to be a fall of only 18%. It was, not unexpectedly, the last months of the year that pulled up the numbers.
However, both France and the three largest exporting countries drastically reduced their purchases; France, the United States and the United Kingdom decreased by 20% and Japan by 28%.
The rescue came from (the rest of) Europe, which declined much less, and Australia, which actually increased by 14%. A total of 245 million bottles were sold.
Typically, annual sales are around 300 million bottles. In the record year of 2007, 338 million bottles were sold.
Travel: Come to Champagne on a wine tour with BKWine.
