The owner of Moët & Chandon, Krug and Veuve Clicquot has been left with a post-pandemic hangover after a sharp drop in champagne sales. French luxury goods giant LVMH suffered a 16pc slump in wine and spirit sales to €1.4bn (£1.2bn) during the first quarter of 2024. The company, which also owns Dom Pérignon, on Tuesday said this was driven by “the normalisation of post-Covid demand”. It follows years of record demand for champagne during and immediately after the pandemic. Champagne sales hit multi-year highs in both 2021 and 2022. Global champagne shipments reached 326m bottles in 2022, the highest figure since 2008. It marked a steep increase on the 245m bottles shipped in 2020, the lowest level in more than 20 years. Philippe Schaus, chief executive of LVMH’s wines and spirits division, said in 2022 that demand for bottles of bubbly was so strong that the company was calling it the “roaring 20s”. He put the jump in demand down to American customers taking advantage of the strong dollar to buy the French fizz. The frenzy sparked concerns of a global champagne shortage after production cuts and labour shortages left suppliers scrambling to meet demand. Champagne sales returned to...