Jiles's Blog

CHAMPAGNE BULLETIN FEBRUARY 2023

SUPPLY CHAIN WOES

The disruption to supply chains caused primarily by government policies in recent years in response to energy and health-related issues, is not showing any sign of improvement, if anything the situation is getting worse.

The latest problems relate to the supply of glass bottles which are a fundamental requirement for wine makers all over the world and France is no exception.

The issue is at the forefront of winemakers’ minds at the moment because this is the time of year when many wine makers are bottling the wine from the 2022 vintage.

According to a report in The Drinks Business, the problem started when many furnaces were forced to reduce production levels during the CVD episode. Today the problem is different but no less severe. It is caused by rocketing energy prices which, according to the report, have gone up by as much as four times over the past couple of years with the result that glass makers have again scaled back production.

Some bottles are no longer being made and others are in very short supply- clear glass for example.

For some types of wine there are alternatives such as cans and, in some cases, paper cartons, but these options are not possible for champagne because of the pressure that the bottles need to withstand and also because of the prestige presentation that consumers expect from a bottle of champagne.

It is not yet clear when and how these supply constraints will ease but ease they must if supply is to keep up with the buoyant demand from around the world.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND IN CHAMPAGNE

The principles of supply and demand are well-known and widely accepted: roughly speaking if supply goes up and demand remains stable, the price will fall. Conversely, if demand goes up and supply remains the same, the price must increase.

To put today’s situation into context it’s interesting to take a look at some data about how these two parameters have evolved in Champagne over the past half century or so. First let’s examine the supply as represented by the area planted with vines in the Appellation Champagne.

According to statistics from the Comité Champagne, back in the 1950s there were only some 12,000 hectares planted with vines. For the next 60 years or so the area under vine has been on a constant and rapid upward trend reaching 30,000 + hectares around 2010: an increase of almost three times.

Since 2010 there has been very little change because we are almost at the limit of the total 34,200 hectares authorised in the appellation - a total which is more theoretical than attainable since there are always a significant number of hectares lying fallow for a year or two to allow the soil to recover after old vines have been uprooted.

In this context one might expect the price of champagne to have fallen in the same proportion as the increase in supply, but other factors are at play; although the area under cultivation has increased, the yield in terms of the quantity of grapes harvested ( called the rendement) has not followed the same pattern.

As the chart below shows, there was approximately a threefold increase in the rendement between 1950 and about 2010, but from then to the present day the rendement has decreased.

The brown line shows the yield each year and the black line shows the 10 year average

The recent decrease is due to a number of factors amongst which are an awareness that preserving the health of the soil is not compatible with ever-increasing yields, and a greater focus on the quality of the grapes rather than solely on the quantity. These considerations have led to a deliberate reduction in the amount of fertilizer used resulting in fewer grapes per square metre and a reduced weight per bunch.

This then, is a second factor at play in the supply side of the equation. Let’s now look at demand.

In this chart you can’t see the exact numbers involved but the inexorable increase in sales is obvious despite the occasional blip along the way. (source: Comité Champagne)

Sales in 1947 were just 21.5 million bottles

By 1956 they had more than doubled to 44 million

By 1967 they had doubled again to 93 million bottles and from then on things really took off

100 million bottles by 1970

200 million bottles in 1986

300 million in 1999 and since then sales have settled at around 310 million bottles + in years that are not disrupted by one crisis or another.

I’ll leave you to do the maths, but that’s a pretty impressive percentage increase – far greater than the increase in supply -  and it’s fairly constant over the long-term making champagne a very attractive business to be in.

To summarise, demand has more than kept pace with the increase in supply and over the past two years the strength of that demand has increased yet again with the inevitable result that prices are firming up considerably as is evidenced by the fact that the total ex cellars value of sales exceeded 6 billion euros for the first time in 2022 – of course, at consumer level the figure is much higher still.

Added to this is the fact that the area of the Appellation Champagne is limited and even if a decision is taken one day to increase the area, that increase is unlikely to be very substantial, so the argument for higher prices for champagne continues to look very persuasive.

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

Export sales are the driving force behind the increase in demand for champagne in recent years.

It was the case for many years that the French drank more champagne per year than the rest of the world put together – exports accounted for less than half total sales.

That situation reversed about a decade ago and since then a combination of factors has made the divide between domestic sales in France and exports all the more significant.

An increasing concern about alcohol abuse led to severe restrictions in France on advertising and promoting alcohol, and a decline in young people drinking wine has also had an impact.

Many voices complained that champagne has an old-fashioned image and was consumed mainly by older people. Whilst this may still be true statistically, a number of initiatives have been put in place to make champagne a drink to be enjoyed by a much wider audience both geographically and in terms of age group.

This, coupled with  the increasing prosperity in many developing countries and the rise of a middle class with discretionary income and a desire to enjoy what they perceive as some of the luxuries of life, is what is driving the boom in export sales.

The first shipment figures for 2023 only confirm this trend. For the 12 month period up to January 2023 sales were buoyant at 327 million bottles with the majority of these being in export markets whilst in France sales were down 2% versus last year.

Looked at overall, the champagne story today seems to be repeating what has occurred over the past 70 years. It’s a story of inexorable growth punctuated by repeated crises which only goes to demonstrate the extraordinary resilience and appeal of champagne.

That's a thought worth raising a glass to - champagne of course.

Until next month

CHAMPAGNE BULLETIN JANUARY 2023

Welcome to the first Champagne Bulletin of 2023.

It probably won’t come as any surprise that January has been a relatively quiet month in Champagne, but nevertheless they are a couple of stories that have attracted considerable attention.

Rules and Regulations

Those of you have already had a discussion with me about your champagne brand project will have heard me say that the rules and regulations surrounding champagne are much more strict than you might imagine.

For example, you can’t add any flavourings or colourings to champagne and that’s just one of many rules that have to be adhered to during grape growing, wine making and labelling. If they are not, then the wine cannot be called champagne, but there are sometimes more severe penalties as one unfortunate (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, unwise) champagne maker found out recently to his extreme detriment.

Frederic Gallois and his family have been tending vines and making champagne for many generations in a village in one of the more remote parts of the Champagne region. Perhaps M. Gallois thought that his out-of-the-way location would mean that he would be safe from the occasional inspection by the authorities. If so, he has recently been proved very wrong.

The suspicions of the authorities were aroused when it came to light that M. Gallois was harvesting grapes in his vineyards outside the dates that are officially permitted each year. This, in itself, could well have incurred a penalty, but things soon became worse – a lot worse

On closer inspection, it was found that some of M. Gallois’s vines were producing more than the permitted yield. It was then discovered that some of M. Gallois vineyards had been planted with varieties that are not permitted in the AOC Champagne. (Appellation d’Origine Controllée)

So M. Gallois faced charges on at least three counts:

Harvesting outside the officially designated dates

Planting grapes varieties not permitted in Champagne which led automatically to a third charge of

Producing and selling wine that did not confirm to the rules of champagne and deceptively passing off this product to consumers as genuine champagne.

The severity with which the authorities view this sort of breach of the rules is reflected in the penalty imposed. The fine of €12,000 was relatively minor; a far more ruinous punishment was the confiscation of some 100,000 bottles from the cellars of M Gallois. These bottles had a reported value of some 2 million euros.

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A shift in market dynamics

In other news, Kylie Minogue, whose range of still wines and Prosecco is enjoying spectacular success, has suggested that she would be interested in launching a champagne brand., however this may be easier said than done, in the short term at least, due to the constraints in supply at the moment.

You will have read in recent bulletins that supplies of champagne are extremely tight at the moment. In consequence all champagne makers are wary of taking on new clients and new projects.

The dynamics of the market have shifted significantly over the past two or three years and we have gone from a situation in which champagne houses were keen to accept new clients to the opposite situation in which new clients need to put forward a proposal that offers real benefits to the champagne maker apart from just more volume. This could be the chance to enter markets in which the champagne maker is not currently represented, the chance to reach a new type of consumer, or the chance to be associated with a high-profile personality whose image fits the champagne house’s marketing objectives.

In Kylie Minoghue’s case this should not be a problem, but even so the quantity of bottles available may be somewhat limited for the next year or two until the wines from the 2022 harvest start to become available for sale.

Champagne shipments in 2022

  To put the demand /  supply situation into clearer focus, it has just been announced that the total number of bottles shipped in 2022 ( to France and to export markets) reached 326 million bottles. That’s the second highest figure ever behind only the 338 million bottles shipped in 2007.

In terms of value, the record so far was achieved in 2021 when the total value of shipments was 5.7 billion euros. The precise figure for 2022 has not yet been released but in all likelihood, it will exceed 6 billion euros for the first time

Premiumisation is the name of the game

The combination of strong demand for champagne and the limited supply makes for a classic Sellers’ Market and the prospect of significant profits to be made. This has not escaped the attention of many of the largest names in the world of wine.

In a move that underlines the interest in Champagne shown by major international drinks companies over the past three or four years, Artemis Domaines, a group controlled by the Pinault family which also owns prestige brands from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa Valley, has acquired Champagne Jacquesson, a highly respected and mid-sized producer based in Dizy. This adds to the associated Artemis Domaines already enjoys with Champagne Henriot.

This is yet another piece of evidence that demonstrates the shift, over the past few years, towards the ‘premiumisation’ of champagne which one imagines will lead to higher prices for brands that succeed in creating a premium image and, one only can assume, greater profits for the owners of those brands.

Method in my madness (to C or not to c?)

Finally, some of you may be wondering why I sometimes spell Champagne with a capital ‘C’ and sometimes with a lower case ‘c’. My choice of spelling may seem random but there is some logic to it, at least in my eyes.

Always spelling Champagne with a capital ‘C’ does not take into account the fact that there are two separate ways of referring to the word in French: La champagne means the geographic region of Champagne, whilst Le champagne refers to the sparkling wine made in Champagne.

Since Le and La are not used in English, the only way I can find of differentiating between the two uses of the word is to use a capital ‘C’ for the region and a small ‘c’ for the wine.

I hope this explanation lends some method to my madness, but I am certainly not saying that my method is correct. Feel free to do whatever you want.

Until next month...

CHAMPAGNE BULLETIN NOVEMBER 2022

Supply and demand

In previous Champagne Bulletins, I’ve often touched on the fact that stocks in Champagne are running low because of two consecutive small harvests in 2020 and 2021 followed by a large and unexpected increase in sales of champagne as many aspects of life returned to normal at the end of that pandemic.

The latest shipment data from the CIVC show just how strong the rebound in sales has been.

The moving annual total for shipments in the 12-month period from 1^st October 2021 to 30 September 2022 shows a total of 336.5 million bottles shipped.

Contrast this with the figure of just under 300 million per year at the start of the pandemic and with the figure of just 250 million bottles at the low point during the pandemic and you have a good idea of how much sales have taken off recently.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the record from annual shipments stands at 338.7 million which was set in 2007, so we’re well on track to exceed even that within the next few months.

This situation has led to a lot of speculation that there will inevitably be shortages of champagne this Christmas and New Year.

To add fuel to this fire, in a recent interview, Philippe Schaus,  the head of Moët Hennessy – the wines and spirits branch of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury brands group - confirmed that he expects just the kind of shortages that have been feared.

Photo credit © Jean-François Robert

Before you rush out right now to buy every bottle you can find, let’s look at the situation more closely.

Yes., it’s true that stocks are under pressure, and it will be a couple of years before stocks are significantly replenished when the wines from the 2022 harvest become available for sale. However, the effects may not be felt in the same way across all segments of the champagne market.

What tends to happen when supply is constrained whilst demand remains high is that prices go up and this is what can already be seen playing out.

One producer I work with has just raised prices for the third time this year and whilst the underlying cause of the increases has been rising prices in raw materials, the effect is to dampen sales which sooner or later will help to ease the pressure on stocks. In this sense the market acts as a self-regulating system as it always does.

This is reassuring in the mid- to long-term, but not in the next few months. Therefore, in the immediate future what we will probably see are fewer and less-generous discount offers over Christmas and the New Year, especially on non-vintage champagnes where the demand over the holiday season is the most intense. Paradoxically, it may be that higher priced cuvées are easier to find with the exception of the very best-known brands which are often subject to supply limitations in normal circumstances.

Aim high

For anyone looking to create a private brand, all this disruption may have a number of impacts.

It’s likely that over the next few months it will be harder to find suppliers willing to accept new projects, particularly if the projected number of bottles is significant and the target buying price is on the low side.

This trend, coupled with rising prices will put additional pressure of the profit margins of any new brand targeting a mid-to-low-end retail price point. However, this segment of the market has always been the most competitive and the most difficult to penetrate, so now more than ever, it makes sense for any new brand to shoot for a more luxury positioning that offers the potential for more viable profit margins.

This interpretation of the state of the market is borne out in a recent study of the global market for luxury brands carried out by Bain & Company.

According to the study, by 2030 there should be an additional 100 million consumers joining the ranks of luxury brand buyers. Foremost amongst these new consumers will be young people born in the early 1980s ( Generation Y) and those born around the turn of the century ( Gen Z )

Know your customers

Whenever I work with a new client on a private brand, one of the first questions I ask is “ Who are your target customers?”

In my view this is an absolutely fundamental question that influences almost every other aspect of the brand image and positioning and consequently is a determining factor in the success of any new brand.  The more you understand your customers, the better you can respond to their expectations and the greater your brand’s chances of success.

That’s why a recent report by Wine Intelligence into the expectations of younger wine drinkers is particularly interesting. The study addressed only the U.K. market, but I think it’s reasonable to extrapolate the findings into other markets

You can read more in this article in The Drinks Business

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/11/this-is-what-the-younger-generation-wants-from-wine/

but the key points are:

A. Boomers (55+) and Gen X (40-54)

• Boomers and Gen X remain the key targets for the wine industry because wine drinking is a solid habit and wine dominates their alcohol repertoire.
• These two groups account for 73% of the wine drinking population and 66% of total spend in off-premise.
• Their wine-drinking focus is on the informal and functional (taste, food matching, relaxation).
• They have routine purchase-patterns at entry and mid-price points.
• Gen X (40-54) are more willing than boomers to trade up in the off premise, they are more involved drinkers, and they still seeking novelty.

B. LDA Gen Z (18-24) and Millennials (25-39)

• LDA Gen Z and Millennials are the key targets in the on-premise and for premium and super premium wines.
• Both generations account for only 26% of the regular wine drinking population but for around 50% of the total spend in bars, pubs and restaurants.
• For both of these cohorts, wine carries social values, prompting curiosity, involvement and higher spend levels.
• LDA Gen Z tend to be price sensitive though are willing to trade up for social occasions. They also show specific interest for sweeter styles of wines, rosé and sparkling.

For those doing business in the USA or Canada, Wine Intelligence publish specific reports into the latest wine trends. Find out more here:

https://www.wineintelligence.com/what-we-do/wine-consumer-observatories-2022/

New product launch

On the subject of luxury brands, one new brand of champagne has recently caught the eye.

It’s called Cuvée Karma 2016 and has been produced by Champagne Victor and Charles whose owner claims to have produced the most beautiful bottle in the world.

The bottle certainly looks extremely elegant, and a real diamond is embedded into the logo displayed on each bottle which partly explains the retail price of €575

The wine itself does not lay claim to be of any exceptional quality, but if rarity (only 1,000 bottles available at the moment) and visual impact are anything to go by, then Cuvée Karma should be a success.

The cost of producing a bottle like this one is clearly on the high side – even very high, and so the initial investment would have been considerable, but as we touched on above, the potential return on a luxury brand such as this is also high. With a potential turnover of €575,000 there should be ample room to cover all the development costs plus quite a bit to spare.

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That brings me to the end of the last Champagne Bulletin for 2022.

I’ll see you again in 2023 with more news and views from Champagne and in the meantime, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year with plenty of sparkle.

CHAMPAGNE BULLETIN OCTOBER 2022

In case you missed it, October 28^th was Champagne Day.

In case you’ve never heard of Champagne Day, it started over a decade ago, as an online only event for champagne lovers who wanted to share their enthusiasm with like-minded people around the world. That’s still the central theme to the event, but now it has given rise to loads of spin-off events both on and off-line, to celebrate and share champagne and to get people talking about champagne

Other than Champagne Day it’s been a fairly quiet month in Champagne with one of the main talking points being the sharp increase in costs faced by most champagne makers and other actors in the champagne supply chain. The most significant impact comes from the cost of energy, but this is not something unique to Champagne.

Meanwhile, consumer demand continues to be strong from around the world and the low levels of stocks has lead some producers to put their customers on allocation, meaning that the amount they can order is limited. It’s a situation that is likely to persist into next year and beyond until reserves and stocks have been built back to more healthy levels.

“The first hundred years are the hardest”

So runs the old adage amongst champagne houses.

This short phrase may strike you as a bit flippant, but there is a lot of wisdom contained in these few words and they underline the fact that in the champagne business, patience is not just a virtue, it’s an essential.

Once the product itself is ready, the first step is to build and secure your distribution base so that you are achieving satisfactory sales volumes and, crucially, repeat orders from regular customers.

Famous actors, musicians and celebrities have a distinct advantage in this regard because one word on social media from them to their fans can sometimes produce an avalanche of sales. Unless you already have a similarly large and active network of followers it could well take you a couple of years to get to this stage, but growing your customer base is time well spent.

Know your customers

At any stage of brand building, sales forecasting is extremely important not least because of the need to forecast the orders you place with your champagne supplier. These order forecasts need to be as accurate as possible and need to be shared with the champagne maker as early as possible because of the extended lead times involved in the production of champagne.

Getting the sales and order forecasts right is not always easy, especially in the early stages soon after the brand launch. This is why it is so important to research your target market in as much detail as possible.

The big distribution companies have large sales forces and each person in the sales team will have his or her own customer list. The salespeople can give a fairly accurate estimate of the orders that each bar, restaurant, hotel or wine shop is likely to place in the weeks and months ahead and these estimates are aggregated and used to compile the order forecasts sent to the champagne maker.

Online sales are more difficult to estimate but there are several software packages available to help with this task and to maximise sales and customer satisfaction, Enolytics being one worth looking at.

https://www.enolytics.com

“Start with the end in mind”

Here’s another well-known saying, this one coined, I believe, by Stephen Covey in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

So, the questions that anyone contemplating starting a private champagne brand should ask themselves are ‘Why am I doing this? What is the objective?’.

One objective that is likely to be on many people’s radar is to sell the brand to a larger company and make a handsome profit. Whilst this isn’t easy, it’s certainly not impossible as the recent flurry of acquisitions in the wine and spirit business demonstrates.

Campari, Diageo and Pernod Ricard have all been on the acquisition trail recently although this activity has mainly concerned drinks other than champagne. However, in the past year or two, Remy Cointreau has purchased Champagne J de Telmont, Campari has purchased a majority stake in Champagne Lallier and LVMH has taken a large share in Ace of Spades (Armand de Brignac) with each of these transactions certainly being worth several million euros.

Of course, getting to the position in which you attract the attention of a large industry player is going to take time, probably a long time, but with a strong vision, plenty of effort and sustained investment, it may not take as long as 100 years.

End of year sales

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that sales of champagne are disproportionately skewed towards the end of the year and to the Christmas and New celebrations with fully 60% of annual sales taking place in the last third of the year.

Apart from being an interesting piece of information, there are a number of implications that are relevant to any brand coming new to the market. To give just two examples:

• If you want to take advantage of sales opportunities at the end of the year, it’s crucial to ensure that your brand is available well before October.
• If you are pitching to a distributor, you will need to do this in the first few months of each year because this is when distributors are finalising their product portfolio for the end of the year

These things and more take many months to put in place which sort of brings us back to the quotation at the start of this bulletin. The moral of the story is that however much time you think your project will take, it makes sense to build a few extra months into your planning and/or to start a few months earlier than you would do otherwise.

If you’d like to discuss this or any other aspects of creating your own champagne brand, please send me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Until next month, all the best