The sales jump by Piper-Heidsieck comes amid a flat overall champagne market in Australia, although consumption remains at strong levels per capita. Australia is the sixth-largest market in the world for champagne consumption.

John Noble, the head of industry body Bureau du Champagne Australia, said on Monday that after a 1.8 per cent decline in overall champagne sales in 2018 to 8.38 million bottles across the industry, the market was shaping up to record a similarly subdued performance in 2019.

"The indications are that in 2019 it will remain flat,'' Mr Noble said. But he said there were many different parts of the champagne market and specific brands were performing differently. "There is a lot of dynamic movement within the styles of champagne,'' he said.

There is a strong correlation between the strength of an economy and champagne sales around the world, and Australia is no different, he said. The popularity of prosecco has proved a new challenge for traditional champagne makers.

Mr Collard, who completed part of an MBA at the University of Melbourne early in his career, said Australia was a unique market for Piper-Heidsieck, because its customer base was very strong in the 30 to 45-year-old segment, unlike in its home market of France where the 45 to 55-year-old segment was strongest.

He said the large increases in house prices in major Australian cities over several years to 2018 – and the ''wealth effect'' it brought – had been one of the drivers of better sales for the group locally.

"The house prices rising has spread the wealth,'' he said.

The company had tracked sales data and found that more of its customers were coming from middle-ring and outer-ring suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne.


"To a certain degree we're seeing champagne consumption extend into the suburbs,'' Mr Collard said.

The traditional strongholds of Sydney's eastern suburbs and Melbourne's prestige suburbs like Toorak were still notching strong sales, but it was more geographically spread than a decade ago.

Mr Collard, who is the second most powerful executive at Piper-Heidsieck, said champagne consumption was also increasingly shifting away from just special ''celebrations'' to more of a regular frequency. Part of that was being driven by the younger demographic.

"If they feel like having a bottle of champagne on a Tuesday night they will,'' Mr Collard said.

He said with Australia being one of the most concentrated liquor retailing markets in the world – big players Woolworths and Coles the dominant forces – champagne houses needed to be even more innovative in how they approached the market.

"It does oblige you to be even more innovative in each of those banners with tailormade approaches,'' he said.