(Wine-Searcher) - Appellation authorities take a cautious approach, despite a surge in sales.

Maximum allowable yields in Champagne this year will be lower than they have been in 10 years, as producers look to reduce the amount of wine they have on hand.

The Comité Interprofessionnel des Vins de Champagne (CIVC) set the maximum yield and other harvest parameters on Monday, with the trend to go for lower appellation yield continuing this year. Growers within the appellation are limited to 10,000 kilograms per hectare. A further 500kg per hectare can be released from the Réserve Individuelle (RI) in February to make the total appellation volume 10,500 kg per hectare, or about 307 million bottles. Réserve Individuelle is still wine that hasn’t been though secondary fermentation. This stock is held in tanks by individual producers to be used when vineyards are affected by natural disasters limiting overall production.

With Champagne sales recovering last year and remaining steady for the first six months of this year – and plenty of grapes in the vines – one may ask why the yield has been set so low. According to Pascal Férat, president of the Syndicat Générale des Vignerons (SGV) and co-president of the CIVC, the answer can be found in the amount of stock held by the region.

"We decided to play it safe and go for a similar yield as last year; after all bottle stocks are rather high at the moment," he told Wine Searcher. Bottle stocks on hand amount to 3.5 times the current sales figures. Jean-Marie de Barillère, president of the Union de Maisons de Champagne (UMC) and co-president of the CIVC, further clarified the situation: "The current stock situation has remained maintainable only because interest rates have been quite low, but we need to prepare for the future and it would be crazy to further increase current stock volumes."

All in all, the yield has been deliberately set low with the confidence that there are enough bottles in stock to pre-empt a sudden spike in sales. This is in line with the traditional approach; appellation limits have always been set in line with future sales and stock predictions. This is also one of the main reasons that a maximum is set for the RI each year.

Interestingly enough the CIVC and SGV have different views on what the RI will be this year. The official CIVC statement is that there will some RI but the exact amount has not been determined yet and will not be decided till August 31. However the SGV sent out an email to all its growers claiming the RI would be 3100 kg per hectare. When asked by Wine Searcher, Férat declined to comment on this independent approach by the SGV.