Champagne bottles ready to serve
© AFP/File Olivier Laban-Mattei

REIMS, France (AFP) - Champagne producers exported 150 million bottles to 190 countries last year, a 7.3-percent jump from 2006, confirming the emergence of new markets for the prized nectar, produced in a small region of northeast France.

Figures released this month showed overall worldwide sales of the legendary tipple hitting a record in 2007 with 338.7 million bottles sold -- plus 5.3 percent.

Some 188 million bottles were guzzled in France alone, but given the choice growers prefer the bigger profits to be made outside France to domestic sales, with export prices around 30 percent higher.

While French consumers buy non-vintage brut (dry), the basic champagne, overseas consumers, for instance in Japan, buy up-market vintage brands, with a bigger profit margin.

The only champagne market to shrink in 2007 was the United States, where exports slumped 6.22 percent to 21.7 million, hit by the unfavourable exchange rate between the euro and dollar.

Outside France, according to the Interprofessional Champagne Wine Committee (CIVC), Britain was the biggest champagne drinker, with 38.9 million bottles.

Champagne bottles in a cellar
© AFP/File Olivier Laban-Mattei

Sales in Russia jumped 41 percent to pass the one-million mark, while in China exports soared 30 percent to 650,000, a nine-fold increase in five years.

Japan also notched up one of the biggest rises, becoming the world's sixth market with 9.1 million bottles sold -- up 14.4 percent.

The Asian continent now accounts for nine percent of all champagne exports, but the drink's core market remained the European Union, which last year absorbed 61 percent of exports, or 91.4 million bottles, a nine-percent rise.

In the European Union, the fastest-growing markets, though still small, were new entrants Romania, up 129 percent, Slovakia, where exports were multiplied by 11, Lithuania -- times seven -- and Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, where sales tripled.

France's southern neighbour Spain, the world's eighth largest market, saw sales soar 27.5 percent to 4.5 million.

More surprisingly, exports also rose 18 percent in the United Arab Emirates to flirt with the one-million-bottle mark -- growth attributed to the booming luxury hotel industry in the Muslim Gulf state.

Whereas the broader French wine industry has suffered in recent years from overproduction, champagne is produced in limited quantities.

Only 33,500 hectares (83,000 acres) of vineyard are dedicated to champagne production, all in the Reims region of northeast France, under the country's strict Appellation d'Origine Controlee (AOC) wine classification system.

By comparision, the Bordeaux wine-growing region alone has more than 120,000 hectares of grapes under cultivation.

But the champagne world is bracing for a mini-revolution as French wine officials prepare to accept 40 new towns into the AOC, which currently counts 317, allowing dozens of new producers to market champagne wine.

The list of new entrants will be released on March 13 -- although the champagne from the new vineyards is not expected to hit the market for another 10 years.

©AFP