Bushfires and house prices lead to sharp fall in champagne imports

Champagne imports to Australia fell sharply in 2019, with bushfire season and weakening houses prices leaving bottles on the shelf.

Reuben Beasley-Palmer at the Melbourne Cup’s Mumm Marquee. Picture: Jay Town

Champagne imports to Australia fell sharply in 2019, breaking a long streak of the nation enjoying a reputation as a growth market for French bubbly, with bushfire season and weakening houses prices leaving bottles on the shelf.

And sales looked to have fallen further in 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions in March kept Australians locked up in their homes.

However, early statistics suggest champagne sales returned to growth by July as some states came out of lockdown and consumers bought up bubbly to enjoy at home rather than at restaurants and bars.

The real test will come with the Spring Racing Carnival which kicks off champagne season in Australia but is now threatened by COVID-19. At the famous Birdcage enclosure at the Melbourne Cup carnival in November around 10,000 bottles of GH Mumm Champagne are consumed just at the racetrack. But COVID-19 could turn this year’s Cup carnival into a ghost town.

Once one of the fastest growing champagne markets in the world that has seen sales leap almost 140 per cent in the past 10 years, Australia suffered a setback in 2018 with a slight fall and now followed by sharper declines in 2019.

France’s Comite Champagne has put out its global export data for last year which showed champagne exports to Australia dropped 8.7 per cent to 7.7 million bottles in 2019, with the value of Champagne shipped down 7.9 per cent.

“Australia is used to bushfires during its summer months, but this year it was very badly affected: raging fires ravaged a huge area of the country between August 2019 and the start of 2020,” the Comite Champagne report said.

“The fires had a huge impact on the Australian economy, the cost is estimated at $4.5bn and this affected champagne exports, particularly for New Year’s Eve celebrations.”

It has seen Australia slip down one rank to the eighth biggest champagne market in the world, behind Switzerland and just ahead of China.

Inge Fransen, chief executive of Vranken Pommery Australia, the local outpost for the Champagne group, said the bushfires had a huge impact on the festive season of 2019.

“I don't think people were in a celebratory mood or wanted to celebrate while a big part of the country was suffering,” she said, but adding that sales were actually back in growth in 2020.

“It is surprisingly looking OK. Champagne is under a lot of pressure in every continent in the world but Australia turns out to be doing quite well. Closing of licenced venues had an impact in April and May but since then things have turned around and through retail people have been ordering online and consuming at home. We are back in growth.”

Mathew Young, category manager for Champagne & Sparkling at Dan Murphy’s, also said there had been a rebound in sales in the last few months as parts of the country emerged from COVID-19 restrictions.