Champagne producers agreed to pick 32% fewer grapes this year, leaving billions of grapes to rot on the ground, in a move to counter fizzling bubbly sales around the world amid the economic downturn.

The result of the slashed harvest and other reductions will be a 44% cut in the number of bottles produced this year by makers such as LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA -- the world's biggest Champagne producer.

It is one of the starkest signs yet of how cutbacks in consumer spending are affecting this segment of the luxury-goods market. Grape growers and bottlers of the wine in the Champagne region of France haven't significantly cut the volume of usable grapes since 1955, when a bumper harvest was reduced.

Champagne buyers "are definitely being more price oriented," said Jill Pienta, assistant manager at Randolph Wine Cellars in Chicago. She said some of her customers were switching to cheaper, non-Champagne sparkling wines, such as Pierre Delize Blanc de Blancs, priced at $8 a bottle.

Global Champagne sales are expected to drop to as low as 260 million bottles this year from a high of 339 million bottles in 2007. In 2008, as the recession set in, sales slipped to 322 million bottles, the first decline since 2000.