Two sparkling wine tasting flights are on offer at Stella's Wine Bar at The Post Oak Hotel in Houston, where rooms cost as much as $2,000 a night and the guests include celebrities and athletes. The Champagne flight, featuring three Billecart-Salmon wines, costs $60. The sparkling wine flight, which includes a Cava, Cremant, and Franciacortia, costs $24.
How much does it speak to Champagne’s sales woes in the US that the best-selling flight — regardless of the age, gender, or demographic of the guests — is the sparkling wine? And, says Julie Dalton, MS, the wine bar’s wine director & chef sommelier, the race is not even close.
“The Champagne flight is just not as popular as it used to be,” says Dalton. “And it’s all about price.”
Which, in a nutshell, summarises what’s happening to Champagne sales in the US. Yes, much of the wine business is suffering, but Champagne, once thought to be immune from any kind of slump, is especially suffering. In the 12 months ending November 2024, sales fell double digits in both volume and revenue, according to SipSource, which tracks United States wholesaler depletions. The drop in traditional restaurant sales and volume over that period is even worse than the overall on-premise decline.
“It’s definitely pushback about pricing,” says Pierre-Jules Peyrat, the export manager for Champagne Bruno Paillard, who says that retailers and restaurateurs are balking at wholesale prices that now trend higher than $50 a bottle. “Consumers are trading down, too, and because of that, they’re trading down on their expectations of quality.”
By the numbers
The SipSource data, usually considered among the most complete and reliable in the US, is more than depressing. Overall, Champagne sales volume dropped 10.4% in the 12 months ending in November 2024, while revenue fell 13.8%. The declines were 11.5 and 15% for the off-premise and 7.2 and 11% for the on-premise.
An even more telling fact is that Champagne sales in traditional restaurants, perhaps the category’s most important sales outlet in terms of marketing and prestige, dropped 11.4% in volume and 14.4% in dollars.

The drop in dollar volume, says Michael Bilello, EVP, Strategic Communications & Marketing and director, SipSource, for the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, is exceptional, given the higher prices.
“Notably, the decline in revenue is outpacing the decline in volume,” he says, “highlighting that the impact of trading down is not just reducing sales volume but also cutting into the higher price points that have traditionally supported Champagne's premium positioning.”
Which means trouble, and not only in the short term.
“This is a concerning trend for the Champagne category,” says Bilello. “The market appears to be under pressure due to consumer trading down, which has disproportionately impacted this premium-priced segment of the sparkling wine category.” He continued, “This analysis signals the need for targeted strategies to address shifting consumer preferences, emphasize value propositions, and adapt to the competitive pressures within the sparkling wine market.”
The impact of trading down is not just reducing sales volume but also cutting into the higher price points.
Some of the worst of the sales declines can be attributed to the pandemic bump that pushed sales much higher than normal and may have exaggerated the decline. Nevertheless, Champagne pricing, say those interviewed for this story, remains problematic.
On the one hand, poor harvests, like those in 2021 and, to a lesser extent, in 2022, cut supply and that tends to boost prices But, as Dalton notes, it’s not like decreased supply in Champagne cuts production like it does in Burgundy, where prices have also skyrocketed. And US retailers and restaurateurs, while acknowledging the inflation pressures that forced wineries around the world to raise prices over the past several years, still wonder if it’s only inflation behind Champagne’s price hikes.
Or, as California wine marketer Tim McDonald asks, is it just Champagne being Champagne? There is still a sense, he says, that Champagne considers itself above the fray, and that the region’s producers don’t see themselves in competition with other sparkling wines. So they seem to think they can charge what they want, regardless of market conditions.
“I think Champagne markets to the one percenters, who know that Champagne is different from other sparkling wine,” McDonald says. “But I also think that Champagne doesn’t understand just how small that 1% market is in the US these days, and that younger consumers not only don’t want to pay Champagne’s prices, but don’t see Champagne as being special enough so they should pay those prices.” He says that to younger consumers, from those entering legal drinking age for the first time, up to those aged 55, “Champagne is just fizz, just like all the other fizz, like Prosecco and even RTDs.”
Younger consumers
The age question is something that the entire wine business in the US has been grappling with for almost a decade. Younger consumers aren’t as interested in wine as their parents and grandparents, and, although they still drink wine, they drink less of it. Ironically, according to a recent Wine Market Council study, they are trading up when they do drink wine — with the exception of sparkling wine.
Younger consumers may not see a need to trade up, says consultant Christy Canterbury MW, a former restaurant and retail buyer. “There are excellent bottle-fermented sparkling wines that cost less,” she says, “and Prosecco delivers a taste profile, especially with their Extra Dry styles, that is friendlier to the US palate, and it's far more budget friendly.”
In addition, says McDonald, Champagne remains occasion-driven, meaning holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and the like. And though younger consumers still celebrate occasions, they do it differently — less often on-premise, for example. When they do go to restaurants, it’s more likely to be a more casual concept than the fine dining their parents chose. Plus, these casual concepts have smaller wine lists, which are equally as informal – hardly the place a diner would buy a $200 bottle of Champagne, even if it was on the list. Says McDonald: “They’re just not used to spending money in restaurants like their parents did.”
A bright spot?
One bright spot in all the gloom, says Samantha Dugan, the Champagne and sparkling wine specialist at The Wine Country, a retailer in southern California, is grower Champagne. She says it offers consumers better pricing, as the retail sweet spot is around $50, compared to the $50 wholesale price that is chasing away buyers for bigger brands. It also offers the experience that marketers say younger consumers crave, since it comes from small producers who try to make something different and unique that isn’t another Baby Boomer wine. Dugan says her customers seem to appreciate that, including the older ones.
“With the giant brands, my customers just don’t see an urgency to come back to the store and buy another bottle,” she says. “But they do with grower Champagne.”
Champagne faces a changing market in which it must reconcile its pricing needs with consumers who don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
The catch is that what makes grower Champagne successful also means it’s in short supply, so to expect it to rescue the category is likely expecting too much. In fact, says Bilello, the SipSource data shows that the few segments within the Champagne market that are posting positive results account for only 2.6% of total Champagne volume. “This underscores the limited scope of success within the category and the challenges of reversing the broader declines,” he says.
Does all this mean Champagne is going to go away in the US? Almost certainly not. Rather, it means that Champagne faces a changing market in which it must reconcile its pricing needs — whether economic or image-driven — with consumers who don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
“We need to adjust to a market that isn’t inflated by the pandemic, but that is about organic growth, what’s normal,” says Peyrat. “We just can’t expect sales to keep increasing, and if we increase prices, we have to be transparent about why.”
Which may be Champagne’s biggest challenge.