The Dutch Drink Less Champagne, and Almost Always Reach for Brut

Six years of habit, packed into one number: 85 percent. That is the share of all champagne opened in the Netherlands that is plain brut non-vintage. The simplest, most standard version there is.

The figure comes from the Comité Champagne, presented to importers for the Dutch market in early 2026. And it sits next to a second number that grabbed the headlines: 2.6 million bottles shipped to the Netherlands in 2025, down from 3.1 million a year earlier. A sixth of the market, gone in twelve months.

Both numbers matter. But the drop needs context, and the 85 percent needs a mirror.

Champagne consumption in the Netherlands, in perspective

The Netherlands is the world’s twelfth champagne market, worth exactly one percent of global volume. Small, but not marginal.

The Comité series runs back to 2016, and one year stands out when you line them up: 2021. That year 4.2 million bottles came to the Netherlands, at 73 million euros in turnover. A spike that towers over everything around it.

Remove 2021 and the picture changes. Between 2016 and 2019 the Netherlands moved between 2.4 and 2.7 million bottles. The 2.6 million of 2025 lands right in that band. What looks like a crash is partly a return to the level before the peak.

That doesn’t make the fall harmless. Against 2024 it is a sharp turn, and 2024 was itself a recovery year. But “the champagne market is collapsing” misses what happened. The market normalised after an exceptional bubble, then corrected a little further on top.

The Dutch play it safe

Back to that 85 percent brut non-vintage. To read it, you have to set the Netherlands beside other markets.

The Comité data breaks every market down by cuvée type. The Netherlands: 85 percent brut non-vintage, 5 percent rosé, 3 percent prestige cuvée, the rest split across high and low dosage. Compare that with Japan, the most adventurous market of all, where brut non-vintage drops to 61 percent, with 12 percent high-dosage cuvées and 7 percent prestige. The Japanese experiment. The Dutch don’t.

Where the Netherlands stands out most is the rosé that isn’t there. In 2016, 7 percent of Dutch champagne was rosé. Now it is 5 percent. Germany sits at 14 percent rosé, Switzerland at 13, Spain at 12. Dutch drinkers reach for pink champagne roughly a third as often as buyers in those other European markets.

Let’s be fair: the Netherlands is not the most conservative market going. That title belongs to Belgium, at 93 percent brut non-vintage, and Australia at 92. The Dutch sit just below. But the mix of heavy brut, thin rosé and little prestige draws a clear profile. The Dutch champagne drinker likes the familiar.

Is that a problem? Not really. Brut non-vintage is the style a house pours its identity into, and often where the value per euro is strongest. Buying standard brut is not a dumb move. But a whole world sits next to it: extra brut, blanc de blancs, vintage champagne, grower bottles with a voice of their own. In the Netherlands, most of it stays corked.

257 growers, and the Dutch still buy the usual

That last point clashes with another figure from the same deck. The Netherlands counts 444 champagne exporters serving the market. Of those, 169 are large houses and 257 are growers (récoltants), plus 18 cooperatives.

Growers make up almost 58 percent of all players on the Dutch market. Over ten years their number grew from 160 to 257. The supply of characterful, small-scale champagne is genuinely there.

But supply is not demand. Growers being 58 percent of exporters does not mean they are 58 percent of the bottles. The volume figures say the opposite: the bulk still goes to brut non-vintage from the names everyone knows. The growers are present, growing in number, and the average Dutch buyer walks straight past them.

Fewer bottles, slightly pricier bottles

One detail softens the gloom. Turnover fell from 70 million euros in 2024 to 62 million in 2025. A drop of eleven percent, while volume fell sixteen.

Do the maths and the average bottle price went up. The Netherlands bought less champagne but paid a little more per bottle. Less, but better. Exactly the direction you’d want to see.

Whether it is deliberate, these numbers don’t say. It could just as easily be price inflation squeezing volume. But the direction holds: the Dutch champagne market is shrinking in count and rising in value per bottle. Anyone with a plan for champagne in 2026 doesn’t need to sell more. They need to tempt that 85 percent to reach, just once, past the standard bottle.

Sources

• Primary source: Comité Champagne, Importers Meeting Netherlands Market 2026 (Bureau du Champagne Benelux), shipment figures, cuvée breakdown and exporters per market, financial year 2025
• Additional: Champagne Paradox 2025: Top Vintage, Falling Sales, VinoVonk, global context for the same decline