Growers and producers in Champagne have agreed to cap the number of grapes that can be made into sparkling wine from this year’s harvest to ensure that the vintage yields fewer than 290 million bottles, which is one of the lowest levels seen this century.
Following a meeting on 19 July between the co-presidents of the Comité Champagne – David Chatillon, representing the houses, and Maxime Toubart, who heads up the winegrowers – it was decided that the limit on yields for the 2024 harvest would be 10,000kg/ha, which is down a little more than 12% on last year’s vintage, when the cap was set at 11,400kg/ha. With the Champagne appellation covering around 34,300 hectares, and approximately 1.2kg of grapes required to produce a bottle of the prized French fizz, this year’s limit on yields of 10,000kg/ha represents a little more than 285.8m bottles – which is around 13m bottles below the total number of bottles shipped in 2023, which totalled 299m. So why has the region decided to impose such a low limit, relative to other harvests this century, except for the 2020 vintage – when the full impact of Covid-related lockdowns were being felt, and the region capped production at 8000kg/ha (which represents around 226.7m bottles)? Setting the yields in Champagne is a complex process, requiring many elements, which include current levels of demand for the product, forecasted sales for the longer term, and existing levels of stock in the region – as well as markets. In
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Champagne
