Majestic Wine drinks to best Christmas in five years

The corks were popping at Majestic Wine today as the company celebrated its best Christmas for more than five years.

"I'm extremely pleased with our performance," said its chief executive, Steve Lewis. "We saw strong growth in New World and French wines and even in champagne. Even business orders — which started falling 18 months ago — improved, showing two per cent growth."

Mr Lewis also hailed his decision to cut the minimum purchase from a 12-bottle case to half a dozen bottles as a huge success.

"It worked as we had hoped, so while the average purchase per visit was lower, the number of extra people coming into our stores more than made up for that. And the key thing is we know that many of those people were new to Majestic."

Like-for-like sales rose 11.7 per cent in the nine weeks to 4 January. That is much better than the 2.9 per cent fall in sales at Christmas last year and even the 1.2 per cent and 4.4 per cent growth seen at the same time in 2007 and 2006.

Mr Lewis said French wines had shown a strong recovery, particularly among Bordeaux, white Burgundies and Rhones as producers held down their prices to try to regain market share against New World wines.

Among Majestic's top-selling festive tipples were Bollinger and Veuve Cliquot non-vintage champagnes at £26.65 and £24.99, Prosecco di Conegliano at £7.99, Chablis Jean Bourguignon at £6.99 and Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc at £5.99.