The amount of Luxembourg crémant exported to locations outside the EU has grown by a healthy volume in recent years. Photo credit: deborah_s_perspective/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The amount of Luxembourg crémant exported to locations outside the EU has grown by a healthy volume in recent years. Photo credit: deborah_s_perspective/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Sales of Luxembourg crémant and other European sparkling wines exported from the EU have been bubbly, while the amount bought from outside the bloc has flattened, according to figures recently released by the EU statistics agency Eurostat.

Luxembourg firms exported 339,000 litres of sparkling wine--worth a bit more than €3.3m--to places outside of the EU in 2021. The sales represented a 4.6% gain in volume over 2020 and 9.4% gain in volume compared to 2019.

Major non-EU export markets included Canada (where 290,838 litres of Luxembourg sparkling wine were sent in 2021), Japan (7,030), the US (6,409) and UK (3,670).

The figures included sparkling wines produced in other EU wine growing regions, such as Champagne and prosecco, but exported from the grand duchy. However, the vast majority of the shipped volume was Luxembourg crémant. The data was on 30 December.

The entire EU exported 636m litres in 2021, “a significant increase of 29% compared with 494m litres exported in 2020,” Eurostat said. Exports had dropped by 6% between 2019 and 2020, due to the pandemic. The top export markets were the US (31%, 198m litres) and UK (28%, 177m litres).

The EU collectively exported 59m litres of sparkling wine to Russia and 8.2m litres to China in 2021. Only 60 litres of Luxembourg sparkling wine were sold to China and 56 litres sold to Russia.

Imports a fraction of exports

Luxembourg firms imported 1,727 litres of sparkling wine from outside the EU in 2021, worth nearly €11,000. That was nearly half of what was imported in 2020, and more than 70% less than what was imported in 2018 and 2019, as non-EU sparkling wine imports have fallen sharply over the previous decade.

Top non-EU import markets included the UK (136 litres were shipped from the UK to Luxembourg in 2021), US (80), Australia (55), New Zealand (33) and Chile (4).

Eurostat stated that collectively, “EU member states imported 5.8m litres of sparkling wine from non-EU countries, which corresponded to only 1% of the amount that was exported.”

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