Champagne: Faced with uncertainty, the industry lowers the quota for the 2025 harvest

Winegrowers and Champagne houses have set the marketable yield for the 2025 harvest at 9,000 kilos per hectare, compared to 10,000 kg last year, in a global economic context marked by uncertainty, the Champagne Committee announced on Wednesday, July 23.

"Thanks to generally mild climatic conditions, the vines benefited from an environment conducive to their development, thus limiting health risks," the Committee emphasized in a press release.

However, "geopolitical and economic instability, combined with increasingly volatile consumer behavior, makes forecasts more complex ." Although Champagne sales "show relative stability ," this uncertainty "encourages the industry to exercise caution," the Committee explains.

In 2024, the marketable yield was set at 10,000 kg per hectare, to take into account the drop in sales. In 2023, it was 11,400 kg per hectare.

The quota chosen for 2025 "is part of a trajectory of progressive destocking in order to readjust production to the reality of the market" , states the press release.

For Maxime Toubart, co-president of the Champagne committee, "the objective is to find a consensus which, at the same time, takes into account the forecasts of sales shipments and the economy of our companies" , in a context of "ambient gloom (...) which encourages us to be cautious" .

The "agronomic yield" , that is to say the quantities produced by the plots, is estimated at this stage at 10,000 kg per hectare, the Committee, which represents 16,000 winegrowers and 350 Champagne houses, explained to AFP.

Around one tonne per hectare should therefore be put into reserve, in the form of wine not yet "champagnized" . "We harvest everything we can and put it into reserve for years when there are, for example, climatic hazards," the Committee explains.

During a harvest preparation meeting in mid-July, the Marne prefect, Henri Prévost, indicated that around 120,000 people were expected for the grape harvest in Champagne.

The harvest, which is expected to begin this year between August 20 and 25, will take place a few weeks after three people were sentenced to prison terms on Monday in Châlons-en-Champagne for exploiting and housing around fifty workers, often undocumented, in undignified conditions during the 2023 harvest.

"We have seen service providers who sometimes recruited grape harvesters at the last minute, structures that were created and then disappeared very quickly," explained the prefect on the sidelines of the preparatory meeting. "Today, a lot of work has been done to structure this profession and ensure that working conditions and standards are respected," he assured.