Champagne producers are turning their backs on low-cost fizz in France as rising grape costs push up prices and French drinkers opt for quality home-grown bottles or low-cost fizzy alternatives like Prosecco.

In what could be considered a matter of national pride, the French are the world’s number one champagne consumers with corks popped at special occasions and aperitifs, particular during the Christmas season.

While champagne bottles fetch high prices abroad, the French have long been spoiled for choice with an offer of cheap fizz for the domestic market, some of it of dubious quality.

However, French tastes for low-cost bubbly between €12 to €20 plummeted by 13 per cent between 2010 and 2016, with this price range now accounting for less than 50 per cent of the market for the first time.

In the past six years, supermarkets’ own cheap champagne labels have slumped by 38 per cent, meaning they now sell around five million of the 310 million bottles sold by the Champagne appellation.