The quintessential party drink

No matter what kind of party it is, there’s one thing you always need – all over the world, people pop the corks of champagne and other sparkling wines whenever there’s something to celebrate.  All over the world? It’s not easy to believe – but sparkling wine is quite definitely more at home in the  “Old” World. According to Euromonitor, the keenest consumers of what’s a total of around two billion litres of sparkling wine are the French, at 5.2 litres each, followed by the Germans (4.2 litres), the Italians (3.5 litres), the Austrians (3.0 litres) and the Slovaks (2.7 litres). Compared to the average global figure for per-capita consumption of just 0.3 litres, these are relatively high levels. Germany (342 million litres in 2011) leads the way in terms of absolute consumption, followed by France with its champagne tradition (328 million litres in 2011).

In Germany, the faithful party-enhancer has one primary colour: red. The sparkling-wine producer Rotkäppchensekt, with its trademark red-capsule dress, has in recent years upped its share of Germany’s sparkling wine market to 48 per cent – and is targeting still more. Last year, the sparkling-wine producer expanded its fermentation cellars and invested in a new bottling line from Krones. Within just four short weeks, assisted by the client, Krones dismantled the existing twenty-year-old Krones line, refurbished the flooring, and installed the new line. “It all went off like clockwork”, was the verdict of Tobias Rost, the Technical Manager at Rotkäppchen.

As part of this mutually supportive relationship, the experts from Ecomac modified another old Krones line for handling piccolo bottles.  And here, too, they did a fine job all along the line – due cause for celebration.