The discovery in its historical cellars in Aÿ came as a result of efforts to create a detailed inventory.  During a mammoth restoration project started in 2012 under the guidance of cellar master Gilles Descôtes (pictured), workers discovered a stash of venerable bottles and magnums hidden behind a wall of empty old bottles in a small, abandoned cellar, divided up by old wooden panels, previously…

The most impressive growth in value comes from the US where shipments rose by 7.09% to 20.51m bottles, but this was worth €514.8m, up 28.18%. This puts the US ahead of the UK as the most valuable export market for the Champenois, even though more than 13m fewer bottles of champagne were shipped there.

IT’S HARD TO GET A CLEAR PICTURE OF THE VOLUME of champagne that goes through the travel retail sector. The Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) itself stopped compiling figures for this sector in 2014 due to the difficulty in getting accurate and complete information from the major houses, who don’t necessarily keep them separately from domestic sales in the countries involved. The volume the CIVC…