The champagne industry has a lot to celebrate this New Year’s Eve: it might have just had its best-selling year ever.
Reuters gathered industry estimates and predicted that sales could reach €4.7 billion ($5.1 billion) for 2015, which would best the €4.6 billion record from 2007.
During an August earnings call, Pernod Ricard CEO Alexandre Ricard said the drinks maker had a “very, very strong performance of our champagne brands,” G.H. Mumm and Perrier-Jouët, in Japan. And in October, a spokesman for LMVH (maker of Veuve Clicquot, Moët & Chandon, among others) told investors and analysts that the champagne business ”fundamentally is quite healthy from a volume viewpoint,” and that “growth is coming from many directions,” namely in the US—where a quarter of all champagne sales take place in the week before the ball drops—and Europe.
The Reuters report notes that a big reason for the record has been the rise of more expensive champagnes, which would also explain why the value of champagne shipped is reaching record proportions, but not its volume.
But still, upon hearing the news that bubbly sales are their best since the bubble years, spirits industry executives will surely pop open a few bottles of their own, though they should stay responsible, since champagne does get you drunk faster.