by Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – Sales and exports of champagne should come under pressure from inflation this year as well as the return to normalized consumption after record sales in the past two years, driven by the lifting of restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, producers announced on Wednesday.

Champagne shipments are expected to approach 314 million bottles in 2023, the French interprofessional group Comité champagne said in a statement. They reached a record 326 million last year.

In the first half of the year, shipments fell 4.7% to 125.8 million bottles, compared to the same period last year, according to the committee.

Sales abroad reached 77.7 million bottles over the first six months of the year, down 3.7%, while France recorded a decline of 6.3% with 48.1 million bottles.

“The fall in shipments, for France, is attributed to inflation,” a spokesman for the Champagne Committee told Reuters.

“For exports, it’s hard to say because the comparisons are for the year 2022, which was a year when exports were very high in the first half of the year. We rather think that after the post-COVID ‘party’, the situation becomes more normal”.

Champagne producers expect sales to stay about the same over the next three years, at an average of 315 million bottles, she said.

The grape harvest in Champagne, which should start in September, bodes well with beautiful, well-formed grapes, frost, hail and mildew having caused little damage this season, even if groundwater levels remain a concern.

The marketable yield for 2023 has been set by the Champagne Committee at 11,400 kilograms per hectare compared to 12,000 kg/ha in 2022.

(Sybille report from La Hamaide, Kate Entringer)

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