Research ·

Champagne, Crémant or English fizz?

Before the end-of-year corks fly, we put six sparkling wines side by side on Wine Labs data: what they cost on the shelf, what critics give them, who stocks them, how they trade at auction, and which Champagne houses earn their bubbles.

Live retail listings
371,866
Sparkling wines
14,233
Merchants
11,839
Auction lots
214,139

01 · Retail prices

The fizz ladder

Six wines, one shelf. The median Champagne listing costs $82, 5.2× the median Prosecco. English sparkling sits in between at $49, closer to Franciacorta than to Champagne.

Champagne
265,791 listings
$82
English sparkling
4,827 listings
$49
Franciacorta
14,839 listings
$36
Crémant
16,354 listings
$22
Cava
25,311 listings
$16
Prosecco
44,744 listings
$16
$5$10$20$50$100$200$500

Thick bar: middle half of listings (25th–75th percentile). Thin line: 10th–90th. Dot: median. Log scale, USD per 75cl bottle.

Share of listings by price band

Under $10$10–15$15–20$20–30$30–50$50–100$100–250$250+
Champagne
16%
42%
23%
16%
English sparkling
47%
38%
Franciacorta
29%
40%
20%
Crémant
16%
22%
40%
17%
Cava
17%
30%
19%
21%
Prosecco
11%
36%
28%
18%
Champagne barely exists under $30: 2.6% of its listings. For Crémant, Cava and Prosecco that is where most of the shelf sits. Prices also spread more for Champagne: for the same wine and vintage, the 90th-percentile merchant asks 48.7% more than the 10th, against 35.9% for Crémant. Shopping around pays most on Champagne.

02 · Critic scores

What a 90-point bottle costs

Median retail price of the wine-vintages that critics scored 90 points or more. The flute fills in proportion to the price.

$172

Champagne

71.5% of rated bottles score 90+

$67

English sparkling

68.9% of rated bottles score 90+

$51

Franciacorta

70.8% of rated bottles score 90+

$29

Crémant

34.2% of rated bottles score 90+

$29

Cava

40.8% of rated bottles score 90+

$20

Prosecco

39.4% of rated bottles score 90+

Critics are almost as generous to English sparkling as to Champagne: 68.9% of rated English bottles score 90+, against 71.5% for Champagne. A 90-point English bottle costs $67; a 90-point Champagne costs $172, 2.6× more. Where Champagne pulls away is the very top: 10.2% of its scores reach 95, against 3.4% for English wines.

What each extra point costs

Hover a score to compare the six wines.

ChampagneEnglish sparklingFranciacortaCrémantCavaProsecco

Median live retail price of wine-vintages at each critic score (100-point scale, at least 5 wines per point).

Prosecco is the only wine where points are almost free: every score from 88 to 94 has a median between $16 and $29. Champagne is the opposite. The median goes from $119 at 92 points to $443 at 96 and $1,215 at 98.

03 · Distribution

Who stocks what

Champagne is everywhere. The other five are local stories: Cava in Spain, Prosecco in New Zealand, Franciacorta in Italy — and English sparkling in the UK.

ChampagneEnglishFranciacortaCrémantCavaProsecco
USA1,832 stockists
90%
12%
22%
50%
57%
75%
France1,349 stockists
81%
1%
2%
40%
5%
14%
UK910 stockists
78%
56%
16%
38%
36%
56%
Germany805 stockists
77%
5%
18%
49%
27%
52%
Italy778 stockists
71%
2%
65%
27%
10%
64%
Spain516 stockists
69%
3%
5%
13%
82%
24%
Netherlands513 stockists
86%
8%
17%
41%
52%
54%
New Zealand399 stockists
75%
12%
2%
22%
20%
87%
Australia362 stockists
86%
9%
13%
37%
19%
52%
Hong Kong277 stockists
91%
10%
8%
23%
16%
41%
Denmark199 stockists
86%
12%
13%
47%
44%
42%

Share of merchants selling any of the six wines that list at least one bottle of each. Bubble area is proportional to the share.

55.6% of UK sparkling stockists list at least one English sparkling wine: more than list Crémant (38.2%) or Cava (35.8%). In France, Crémant is the only real alternative to Champagne: 40.3% of stockists carry it, against 14.4% for Prosecco and 1% for English wine.

Same shop, different bubbles

How many median Crémant bottles one median Champagne buys, market by market.

Germany
$66 vs $14
4.7×
France
$59 vs $14
4.1×
Italy
$80 vs $20
4.1×
Netherlands
$66 vs $17
4.0×
Japan
$86 vs $23
3.7×
Australia
$105 vs $29
3.6×
Switzerland
$88 vs $25
3.6×
USA
$92 vs $26
3.5×
UK
$78 vs $23
3.5×

One Crémant bottle (median, same market) What the median Champagne costs, in Crémant bottles

04 · Crémant

Crémant is eight wines, not one

1,430 Crémants from 669 producers are on sale today, made by the traditional method in eight French appellations.

AppellationWinesMedian
Bourgogne397$23.99
Alsace459$21.97
Loire235$19.97
Limoux109$20.00
Jura103$31.01
Bordeaux105$18.88
Savoie14$27.58
Die8$14.26
Bourgogne and Alsace have the most listings. Loire has 235 wines on sale at a median of $19.97, the lowest of the three biggest appellations. Jura is the most expensive at $31.01. In France, the median Champagne costs 4.1× the median Crémant.

05 · Auctions

Champagne owns the saleroom

Of 214,139 sparkling wine lots sold at auction that we track, 97.2% are Champagne. Prestige cuvées have become collectibles.

Dom Pérignon+19%Cristal+6%Krug Grande Cuvée+101%Salon+161%

Median auction price per 75cl bottle (premium included), all vintages, by year of sale. 2026 is year to date.

The median Salon bottle sold for $453 in 2014 and $1,182 in 2026: 161% more. Dom Pérignon and Cristal peaked in 2022 and have eased since.

English sparkling reaches the saleroom

English sparkling lots sold per year. Still tiny next to Champagne, but growing.

5
4
7
6
31
35
25
40
70
98
73
96
’14’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
From 7 lots in 2017 to 98 in 2024, at a median of $33 a bottle across 26 auction houses. A warmer south of England now ripens Champagne grapes on chalk like Champagne’s own, and the saleroom has started to notice.

06 · A provocation

The Bubble ranking

Michelin gives grapes to Burgundy and Bordeaux. Champagne has no grapes yet, so here is our data-driven version: 148 houses scored on critics, top scores, auction depth, resale strength and global reach. Top 5 get three bubbles, the next 10 two, the next 15 one.

Critic score (counts double)Share of 95+ scoresAuction lots since 2023Auction price ÷ retail priceCountries with stock

Three Bubbles

5 houses
#HouseCritics

Two Bubbles

10 houses
#HouseCritics

One Bubble

15 houses
#HouseCritics

Click a house to see its five signals (percentile among the 148 houses with enough data).

Krug tops the ranking: the best critic scores and more than 9,000 lots at auction since 2023. The surprise is lower down. Salon and Jacques Selosse have the highest scores of all, but they rank 14 and 23: their auction prices are 0.9× and 0.8× their retail prices, so retail already charges what the saleroom pays. Dom Pérignon, the most traded wine at auction, gets two bubbles for the same reason.

07 · Value picks

92 points for less

The cheapest wine-vintages scoring 92+ in each category, stocked by at least five merchants.

Method

How we built this

Snapshot of Wine Labs data on . Wines are grouped by region: Champagne (all Champagne styles), Crémant (the eight French Crémant appellations), Prosecco (DOC and DOCG), Cava, Franciacorta, and English sparkling (sparkling styles from England and Wales).

Retail: 371,866 live single-bottle 75cl listings from 11,839 merchants, retail offers only (no in-bond, en primeur or auction offers), converted to USD. Price spread compares the 10th and 90th-percentile price for the same wine and vintage, for wines stocked by 8+ merchants.

Scores: critic scores on the 100-point scale, averaged per wine-vintage (16,462 rated wine-vintages). Price-per-score joins each scored wine-vintage to its median live retail price. Non-vintage wines without a vintage are left out of that join, so Crémant and Prosecco samples are smaller (63 and 178 wine-vintages).

Auctions: finished, single-wine lots, outliers removed; price per 75cl bottle including buyer’s premium. The prestige index is the median price of every vintage sold that year, so it moves with the vintage mix as well as the market.

Bubble ranking: Champagne houses with 15+ rated wine-vintages, 40+ merchants and 20+ auction lots since 2023. Each house gets a percentile on five signals (median critic score, share of 95+ scores, auction lots since 2023, median auction ÷ median retail price, countries with stock). Critic score counts double. It is a provocation built on data, not an award.

Sample sizes: Champagne 265,791 listings, Prosecco 44,744, Cava 25,311, Crémant 16,354, Franciacorta 14,839, English sparkling 4,827.

Want this data for your own range? Talk to Wine Labs. More studies in Publications.