Alcohol Sales Are Way Up, With One Exception
If we’ve learned anything from this pandemic, it’s that we drink a lot more alcohol when other forms of recreation are taken away from us. The booze business boomed when mandatory lockdown orders went into effect this past spring. It was as if someone had told us that the best way to ward off the coronavirus was to destroy our livers. For the record, it isn’t.
So what have we been drinking in such copious quantities? Almost everything! Sales of beer, wine, and spirits have all seen significant year-of-year increases. But there’s one adult beverage that has been shunned by imbibers in 2020: champagne.
According to the AP, France’s champagne industry has lost $2 billion in sales this year. One champagne expert said, “Champagne has never lived through anything like this before – even in the World Wars. We have never experienced a sudden one-third fall in sales.”
It makes sense. A bottle of champagne is usually what we open when celebrating something. So many champagne-worthy events, such as weddings and sports championships, have either been cut back, postponed, or canceled in 2020. This just hasn’t been a celebratory kind of year.
With champagne sales down by around 100 million bottles in 2020, Eat This, Not That speculates that many in the champagne industry could pivot towards wine-making. That might be smart. We may not be in the mood for champagne until New Year’s Eve.
