Who drinks champagne, around the world?

Sparkling wine is often treated as the preferred drink for celebrations. There are many excellent types of Old World sparkling wine, from Prosecco (Italy) to Cava (Spain) to Sekt (Germany), to Crémant d’Alsace and Crémant de Loire (France *). There are just as many from the New World, notably from Australia, New Zealand and several parts of the United States of America. It is, however, often claimed that the epitome comes from the Champagne region of north-eastern France.

Whether we agree with this latter assessment of sparkling wine or not, it is worthwhile to have a look at which countries in the world do drink most of the wine exported from this region, as well as who prefers the expensive stuff.

However, we might first have a quick look at the World’s Largest Sparkling Wine Producers and Consumers for 2018, from the American Association of Wine Economists. This first pair of graphs shows the percentage share of world volume, for both producers and consumers.

As you can see, Italy is actually the biggest producer, followed by France; and between them they produce nearly half of the world supply of sparkling wine. Germany and Spain contribute another quarter between them. The New World lags very far behind.

In terms of consumption, the Old World and New World are a bit more balanced, although there is little evidence that the Spanish, for example, are big drinkers of sparkling beverages — the Russians have traditionally made up for this.

Moving on, the Champagne data that I will use also come from the American Association of Wine Economists: the Top 12 Export Markets for French Champagne in 2021, which show shipment value in millions of euros. In the next graph below are the total data for the top 40 countries. Note that this refers to exports, so that France itself is not included in the list (it is the biggest consumer, keeping c. 45% of production).

It surprises no-one that the richest and/or most populous countries dominate the top of the list. Much champagne is, after all, not particularly cheap! As expected, the top of the list is dominated by European countries and their former colonies. The USA is, however, way out in front (50% bigger market than no. 2). It has been noted that it is only recently that the USA has out-consumed the UK, with a 62% increase in 2021 compared to 2020 (Massive sales surge sees US become biggest Champagne consumer after France).

Note that China is way above India, in spite of them having very similar population sizes. Perhaps India does not have a lot of global business successes to celebrate? Also, the United Arab Emirates is way ahead of the other Middle Eastern countries. On a personal note, Australia does also seem to be a long way up the list; in particular, it is surprising that it is ahead of Russia.

However, there are many populous countries that are not at the top of the Champagne list, and therefore it is also valuable to look at the export markets per capita (ie. how much is bought per person). This calculation is what I have done in the next table, based on population data from Worldometer for 2020. Things now look completely different.

Note that a bunch of rather small countries now come to the top. This actually illustrates one of the potential limitations of the calculations, as small groups of people can now dominate. In particular, the purchase behavior observed may not represent the local people at all. Indeed, in this case it is very likely that much of the champagne in the top dozen countries of the list is actually being bought either by or for tourists, rather than the locals.

Moving past this, it is interesting to note that the United Kingdom remains near the top of the list but the USA drops way down, per capita — the British are far more interested in their champagnes than are the Americans. This reduced interest also applies to the Japanese, Germans and Spaniards, but less to the Italians, Dutch and Australians. The Belgians and Swiss remain near the top of the list; and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) also retain their positions. Similarly, two of the Baltic states retain their positions (Latvia, Lithuania), but the other one moves far up the list (Estonia).

In the meantime, it has been noted (Opening the doors to the Champagne region) that: “Champagne has never been great at welcoming visitors. Now, finally, things are changing.” So, an alternative to importing their wine now appears to be visiting, instead.

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* My wife and I also recently had a Crémant de Bourgogne.