Covid-19 has dealt the champagne industry a blow with lockdown curbs on weddings, eating out and parties all affecting the market.
Covid-19 has dealt the champagne industry a blow with lockdown curbs on weddings, eating out and parties all affecting the market. Producers in France’s eastern Champagne region, headquarters of the global industry, say they have lost an estimated 1.7 billion euros in sales for this year, as turnover fell by a third, a hammering unmatched in living memory, and worse than the Great Depression. They expect about 100 million bottles to be languishing unsold in their cellars by the end of the year. “We are experiencing a crisis that we evaluate to be even worse than the Great Depression” of 1929, said Thibaut Le Mailloux of the Champagne Committee, known by its French acronym CIVC, that represents some 16,000 winemakers. Recognising the urgency of the problem, the CIVC is launching unprecedented damage-limitation measures. Like oil-producing countries, the committee regulates the size of the harvest each year to avoid the kind of excess production that would cause bottle prices to plummet. At a meeting scheduled for August 18, it is expected to impose a cap so tight that record quantities of grapes will be destroyed or sold to distilleries at discounted prices.
