In Germany, the consumption of sparkling wine, such as Sekt, Prosecco, or Champagne, is becoming increasingly rare. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 267 million liters of sparkling wine were sold in Germany in 2023, a decrease of 17.0 percent compared to 10 years earlier.
On average, Germans over 16 years old consumed almost 5.0 bottles of 0.75 liters or 37 glasses of 0.1 liters of sparkling wine in the past year, as Destatis reported. The per capita consumption also dropped significantly over the past decade: in 2013, those over 16 years old on average drank 6.2 bottles of sparkling wine or 46 glasses.
The basis of these data is the tax statistics, as the sparkling wine tax is still levied on Sekt, Prosecco, and Champagne, which was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century to finance the imperial war fleet. In 2023, the federal government collected around 361 million euros from the sparkling wine tax.
This tax accounted for only 0.04 percent of the total tax revenues of the federal government, the states, and the municipalities. For comparison: the beer tax, which is a state tax in contrast to the sparkling wine tax, yielded 580 million euros to the states in the latest year.