Chapel Down is to boost its marketing spend as it looks to “amplify brand visibility and consumer engagement” within English sparkling wine.
The Kent-based vintner said it expected marketing investment as a percentage of net sales revenue to be between 13.5%-14.5% in FY26, up from just 11% last year.
The uplift would “strengthen the brand, capture further market share and reinforce gross margin,” it claimed. This would in turn help Chapel Down to meet its stated goal of achieving an equivalent 1% share of the global champagne market by 2035, it added.
The news came alongside a return to profit for Chapel Down in 2025, with the supplier reporting a profits before tax of £470k, compared with a £1.4m loss in 2024.
Adjusted EBITDA, meanwhile, rose 25% to £3.7m. This was under the £4m-£5m Chapel Down had forecast on reporting full-year sales in January, with gross margins falling from 48.4% in FY24 to 47.1% in 2025.
CEO James Pennefather insisted margins would improve as Chapel Down began to phase out wines made from its 2022 grape harvest, which was heavily impacted by inflation.
“Coming into 2026 we’re already seeing good gross margin percentage improvement year on year,” he said.
Asked about the increase in marketing spend for 2026, Pennefather said Chapel Down would roll out a new campaign this summer seeking to align the brand with “the best of British produce”.
Activity is planned across channels including retail media and in-store, with a particular focus in ensuring Chapel Down’s English sparkling wines are well represented alongside British food & drink in supermarkets.
Chapel Down was seeing “really good traction with the big retailers around signposting English wine as a category in store,” Pennefather. However, the new summer push would be geared toward “celebrating home-grown flavours”, and would target millennial foodies, he said.
“We know our target consumer, who we call urban epicureans but are basically affluent urban millennials, are really interested in food,” Pennefather said. “So we’re going to be linking Chapel Down to some of the best of British produce, and that is going to increase interest at a store level.”
No Middle East impact
Meanwhile, Chapel Down was “not seeing any immediate impact on trading from the Middle East war”, on sales or profit margins, it said.
“Our sales in the Middle East region are small, so that’s not impacting us,” Pennefather said. “The impact we are seeing is on our transport costs and the diesel that we use in our vineyards, but that is quite a small part of our overall cost base. The biggest risk is around impact on consumer confidence.
However, Chapel Down had “quite strong defensive characteristics” and was associated with “more informal celebrations” that were likely to endure any downturn in consumer sentiment, he insisted.
“We still think that people will find reasons to come together and celebrate as indeed they did in 2025 when our sales were up 28% on traditional method sparkling,” he added.
Chapel Down shares climbed 6% in mid-morning trading.
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