Greece Is The World's Fastest Growing Champagne Market

Champagne consumption in Greece jumped by almost a fifth last year, making the troubled country the world’s fastest growing market for bubbly.

Greece’s champagne sales by volume increased by 18pc in 2014, which looks particularly stark compared to the global growth of 0.5pc, according to data from Euromonitor International. 

Consumption in the sparkling wine’s home country of France dropped by 1.9pc, while sales in the UK, champagne’s second biggest market, creeped up by 0.4pc. The disparity was even stronger in 2013, when Greek champagne consumption soared by 56pc and dropped by 0.8pc, 3.4pc and 0.5pc in the world, France and the UK respectively.  The relative size of the markets goes some way to explaining the vastly different growth rates.
 

“It’s not that all the Greeks in the last couple of years decided to go party and forget their troubles,” said Spiros Malandrakis, alcoholic drinks analyst at Euromonitor. “In general, we’re talking about minimal volumes in total. Champagne consumption is still lower than before the crisis.” 

Around 300,000 litres of champagne were drunk in Greece last year, a fraction of the size of France’s 107.2m litres and even the UK’s 20.4m. 

That works out to a per capita consumption rate of roughly 1.7 litres of champagne each year for a French person, a third of a litre (slightly less than half a bottle) for a Briton and a negligible amount per Greek.

To read more, please visit: The Telegraph