Wine collectors are at last taking champagne seriously

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE was a champagne enthusiast. He became friends with the heir to Moët & Chandon, now the world’s largest seller of French bubbly, while studying at a military academy. Later, as emperor, Napoleon stopped in Épernay on his way to, and back from, war. “In victory, you deserve champagne; in defeat, you need it,” he said.

Champagne now merits its own victory tour. The value of sales of champagne hit €6.4bn ($6.9bn) in 2023; 2021-23 were the best years on record, even after accounting for inflation (see chart). Over the past five years the “Champagne 50” index, which tracks the value of the top brands traded on Liv-ex, a wine-buying platform, has surged by 47%, more than any other regional index worldwide, including Bordeaux (up by 1.3%), Burgundy (25%) and Italy (29%). In the past half-decade the Wine Advocate has published more articles and reviews devoted to champagne than it did in the preceding 41 years since its founding, says William Kelley, the editor-in-chief. (Bottles can bear the “champagne” name only if they hail from that region of north-eastern France near Épernay.)

On June 20th in Paris Sotheby’s is holding the world’s first champagne-only auction, which is expected to raise €1.5m-1.9m. From 2022-23 the volume and value of champagne sold by Sotheby’s nearly tripled. Last year a champagne producer, Krug, ranked in the top ten wine producers sold by the auction house for the first time.

The fact that wine aficionados have only lately lapped up champagne may be a surprise. Champagne has long been a luxury brand in its own right, a global symbol of celebration and splurging. LVMH, a French luxury-goods juggernaut, has collected champagne companies like a tippler acquiring bottles: it owns seven, including Dom Pérignon, Krug, Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot. Together, they account for an estimated 46% of global champagne sales by value and 23% by volume, according to Edouard Aubin of Morgan Stanley. (The disparity arises because LVMH sells a lot of “prestige cuvées”, an elegant-sounding term for expensive bottles.)

Big champagne houses can afford Balthazar-size advertising budgets. For much of modern history champagne has been “pushed as a bubbly drink for bubbly people”, writes Robert Walters in “Bursting Bubbles” a book about champagne. It has been drunk by rappers and those wrapping up their evenings at night clubs. This “double-edged marketing…has both led to champagne’s incredible popularity and diminished its reputation” among connoisseurs, according to Mr Walters. Oenophiles did not take it very seriously. “Champagne was considered a fine thing, but not necessarily a fine wine,” explains Justin Gibbs of Liv-ex.

Wine-lovers, however, have started to look at their champagne flutes differently. “People now view champagne as a wine and not just a celebratory drink,” says Jamie Graham of Brunswick Fine Wines and Spirits, a British merchant. Instead of being regarded as a mere aperitif to be sipped before moving on to something more serious, champagne is now being savoured and paired with food more often.

Two things changed. One was covid, which gave wine-lovers more time at home to research and try new bottles. It may seem odd that a festive drink flourished at such a bleak time. But well-off people who were not going out to dine in restaurants sought pleasures at home, sometimes bidding in online auctions for new bottles. They also had more time to study the terroir of champagne and producers’ different methods of blending and adding dosage (a mixture including cane sugar that sweetens it before bottling). In other words, drinkers started to “understand there is a wine behind the bubble”, says Arthur Larmandier of Larmandier-Bernier, a champagne house. At first Mr Larmandier thought it would take five years for champagne to bounce back from covid; instead, demand surged, and it “took six months”.

The second factor is more appreciation for the smaller houses that produce limited quantities of high-quality bubbly. Prices for these “grower” champagnes have rocketed on the secondary market: the Wine Market Journal’s grower-champagne index has more than doubled in value since 2019. Oenophiles now invoke these winemakers’ last names with the fondness that football players refer to their teammates: Selosse, Prévost, Collin, Bouchard, Egly-Ouriet. (Selosse, at around $650 a bottle, is the Lionel Messi of grower champagne.)

Growers have brought artisanal winemaking techniques to champagne, relying more on ripe, carefully tended grapes than on dosage; this leads to a lower sugar profile and greater complexity. Appreciation of grower champagne connects with a broader trend in culture, including gastronomy, whereby people are seeking out local, authentic producers and tastes, says Mr Kelley of the Wine Advocate. More reviews of champagne by Mr Kelley and fellow critics piqued the interest of collectors and investors, who found even the highest-quality champagne undervalued, relative to top wines from Burgundy and Bordeaux.

The grower-champagne producers are disrupters, changing not only oenophiles’ minds about French bubbly but also the viticulture practices of some of the largest houses. Recently the grandes marques have been investing more in releases from specific vineyards, which can compete better with grower champagne. They have also altered their marketing, no longer showing photos of suit-clad cellar masters in wine caves but instead featuring them in humble attire in vineyards, closer to the vines.

This is not champagne’s first transformation. In the 17th century, when Dom Pérignon, a monk, was making it in his abbey, bubbles were seen as a flaw: champagne then was a still wine. (Though Pérignon is credited with being the “inventor” of champagne, that is just marketing; his famous remark “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!” first appeared in a 19th-century advert.) It was only in the 18th century that the Champagne region embraced bubbles, as both a source of differentiation and a justification for higher prices.

What does the future hold? France used to buy most champagne, but that changed in 2012. Now America and Japan are important growth markets, says Stéphane Dalyac, chief executive of Laurent-Perrier, a prominent house. Unlike many firms peddling well-known luxury brands, bubbly-makers are not optimistic in the near term about China, where buyers over 40 tend not to gravitate to the cold fizziness of champagne, Mr Dalyac says.

But the sun is shining on champagne in many ways. Climate change is helping the region’s wine by ripening grapes naturally, therefore requiring less dosage, says Peter Gibson of the Wine Market Journal,. Many think the effect of grower champagne will endure, elevating the whole region’s quality for years to come.

Recently champagne houses, thirsting for greater profits, decided to raise prices heftily to exploit the boom, thinking drinkers would tolerate it. However, demand for some fine wines has sputtered, sending wine indexes down. Inflation more broadly and economic uncertainty have also caused consumers to pull back. Champagne houses may be forced to adjust prices downward slightly, to keep demand high. Call it a champagne problem. ■