The basic yield in for the 2014 harvest was set at 10,500kilos per hectare by Champagne’s governing body the Comité interprofessionel du vin de Champagne (CIVC) which regulates champagne production at its meeting just before the August holiday break. This level of yield will to produce around 305.7m bottles of champagne. This is the volume of champagne the CIVC committee charged with analysing the market believes will be needed given the relatively high levels of stocks held by producers that amounts to nearly four years supply.
It is not a particularly optimistic assessment of the current situation which is partly based on the shipment figures for the first half of 2014 that show a very slight rise of 1.4% on the first half of 2013 to 110m bottles. But of course the majority of champagne sales are made in the second half of the year — particularly the last quarter — and predicting the level of demand in the run-up to the year end is always problematic. The MAT figure for the 12 months to the end of June 2014 helps a little, that is up 0.3% to 306.5m bottles on the same 12 months to the end of June 2013. But it is a still a difficult market to read.
The calculation about what a certain yield will produce is easy enough, you just need to know the current area of productive vineyard and that is 33,600 hectares. Because predicting consumption accurately is so difficult, the Champenois have devised a system by which they can make later adjustments to allow for fluctuations in demand by releasing more of the wine held in the Réserve to boost production.
This is quite a complicated system to explain. For 2014, in fact 400kgs/ha of the 10,500kgs/ha allowed will come out of the current reserves held and not the 2014 harvest. And if shipments look like rising above 307m bottles, the CIVC will raise this to 500kgs/ha. In addition vineyard owners can also put up to 3,100 kg/ha into their own reserve stocks, providing that reserve does not exceed the limit prescribed by regulations.