How many bottles are kept in the Champagne houses cellars?

Have you ever wondered how many bottles are kept in the Champagne houses vast cellars?

Over 250 kilometers (155 miles) of Champagne cellars lie beneath Reims, holding around 200 million bottles. The Avenue de Champagne in Epernay that holds many of the big label houses such as Pol Roger, Boizel, Michel Gonet, Moet et Chandon and de Venoge is the most expensive road in the world to insure mostly because of the value of the Champagne that lies beneath it.

The number of bottles in Moet et Chandon’s cellar is strictly confidential, the cellar spans 28 km and the cellar’s vintage section houses Champagne dating back to 1892. The number is thought to be around 100 million though this could easily be much more.

Some other Champagne houses (figures approximate):

• Krug 3.5 million bottles
• Mumm 25 million bottles in 25km of cellars
• Pommery  23 – 25 million bottles in 18km of cellars
• Taittinger 22 million – 3 million bottles in the Taittinger cellars in Reims, the other 19 million are stored elsewhere.
• Veuve Clicquot 40 million bottles

Many houses will have Champagne in storage as it requires the minimum of time of 15 months aging with at least 12 of those on lees and some Champagne houses will require long time that their wines remain stored thus there will always be a stock level in cellars along with a growing vintage collection.

Some Champagne house cellars such as from growers are smaller sized whereas only a few thousand bottles will be stored to millions with the more famous brands.

“The biggest challenge, especially for smaller grower wineries, is storage space. Some of the cellars I have visited I can see and hear about a constant battle between production levels and storage space. It’s all about selling stock to make space and grower Champagne houses have little room usually to think about longer aging options and instead stick to the minimum of 15 months aging for non vintage (at least 12 months on the lees) and 36 months for vintage. As many know, longer lees aging can help improve Champagne immensely, but space is king for many producers!” Christopher Walkey – Founder GlassofBubbly.com