What a rapid change we have seen in the Champagne world recently. Just a few months ago prices were still rising and there was talk of vineyards being expanded. Now we are being told that worldwide demand has dried to a trickle and that stock will be unloaded cheaply. But how true is this and what can we expect of the future?

Well, in October, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury-goods maker, cited a slump in Champagne sales for its third-quarter revenues decline. Revenues at the group’s wines and spirits division, which makes Veuve Clicquot, fell by 8.6% in the period, hurt by lower demand in the US and in Russia.

According to Koncept Analytics’ just-published Champagne Market Report: 2009, the drop in demand has been driven by the global economic slowdown and declining consumer confidence. Consumers are looking for cheaper sparkling wines from Spain, Italy and California, and exports to the US and the UK, Champagne’s largest markets outside of France, have been hit hard. Furthermore, the euro’s strength against other currencies compounded the export problems. However, Champagne’s biggest market, France, has remained relatively buoyant, much helped by private customers who like to buy their wines directly from “their” growers; while rising consumption of Champagne in Russia, China and India has in some way compensated, and exports to these emerging markets are expected to become the key driver of global market growth.

Yet looking at Champagne’s sales figures over recent years, one should appreciate that the current situation is simply a correction of yet another overheated market. It’s no wonder that the concept of expanding the Champagne area had become a pressing issue over recent years. After seven years of continuing growth, sales in 2008 fell back to their 1998/1999 levels. In fact, before this recession the Champenois felt that sales were running too fast and in early 2008 they were looking to increase their prices so as to regulate their sales volume.

All major Champagne houses, the likes of Moët, Veuve Clicquot and Taittinger, have to buy a large proportion of their grapes from contracted growers as their sales far outstrip the production from their own vineyards. It takes an average of three years to create a bottle of Champagne, whose finesse is partly dependant on the amount of time it is aged in the bottle. Producers have to forecast their sales requirements years ahead, so a large sales increase can lead to a shortage of stock, and thereby a perceived lowering of quality. It has been the speed of the market’s decline that has left everyone in Champagne gasping.

With unsold stocks already backing up in producers’ cellars, there was an agreement to reduce the 2009 harvest yield by 40%. This was effected to protect the income of growers who control 90% of grape production. But it’s still difficult in every part of Champagne.

The larger houses have been discounting heavily so as to retain their market share, causing lesser-known houses to suffer as customers abandon them in favour of a better-known brand at the same price. Mid-sized producers have been more able to adapt their costs to the new market conditions, but they do need to push their message about quality and value. Growers are suffering least; income from the houses will fall, but they sell directly to French consumers, who are remaining loyal.

Even though it may be frowned on to indulge heavily in this economically straitened festive season, you don’t actually need to pay a lot to get good Champagne. There are thousands of small growers of varying qualities in Champagne, but my advice would be to look up progressive growers such as Marguet Père & Fils (champagne-marguet.fr — from around €15,) in the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay, or a small Grande Marque House such as Pol Roger (polroger.com — from around €27) in Epernay.

Is the market in freefall? In short, no. Of course, nobody can predict when Champagne’s depression will end but good times will return, thanks probably to those emerging markets in which the houses have been investing heavily in recent years. It may take a little time but Champagne is not doing too badly for now.

Guy Boursot is a wine writer and consultant whose family has been continuously involved with the Champagne trade since the 1820s. boursot.com

BOARD MEETINGS

Need a break to hear yourself think?
Don’t go windsurfing, advises Richard Lofthouse

If you think you know what windsurfing is all about, then think again. What started in the 1970s as a cute extension of surfing has evolved from its mass-market 1980s’ heyday into a smaller but more focused sport divided between an Olympic event emphasising tactics and its wave-jumping, baggy short-wearing cousin, the Hawaii-based Professional Windsurfing Association.

Although financed more by tourist boards and kit sponsors than broadcasters who squeeze footage into graveyard slots, the freestylers might just be on the winning side. Whereas the Olympians use enormously long, clunky boards and have to manually pump huge sails even in the lightest breeze, the freestylers can stay in the bar until a storm comes in, at which point they haul their baby boards into the surf to ride and jump massive waves in a spectacle that seems to defy physics.

Recent British champion John Skye insists that the wave scene is king of the renegade board sports of skate-, wake- and snowboarding, not relying on snow or pricey kit and allowing for “much higher jumps up to 15 metres, and if you wipe out all that happens is you get wet”.

As YouTube clips shakily attest, typical venues are not placid lakes fringed with pavilions but the wildest places on earth, such as Sylt on Germany’s North Sea coast and Tiree, the Scottish Inner Hebridean island reputedly the UK’s windiest place and the setting for a recent British championship, the Tiree Wave Classic.

Heading out into a cauldron of Atlantic fury, competitors ride and jump waves in a series of heats taking place in locations decided on by the judges according to wind and tide conditions. Brimming with technical mastery and finesse, this year’s winner was Irishman Timo Mullen, who, at 36, trounced some much younger competitors, emphasising that windsurfing rewards experience as much as bravery.

Talking of courage, wetsuit technology is so good that the sport is stopped only by ice, and as far as the freestylers are concerned an Atlantic onslaught will always trump a namby-pamby summer storm. Nevertheless, the sport’s spiritual home is the Hawaiian island of Maui, and there is now a global championship and around 50 pros, in the true sense, earning their living from it. While various sub-disciplines have been hatched, including a bizarre indoor scene dependent on steep launch ramps, it is the big-wave jumpers who will continue to scale the heights of recognition www.pwaworldtour.com; www.tireewaveclassic.com