Cognac lost a third of its value in three years. What the BNIC data says about where the category goes next.

In 2022, cognac was a €3.6 billion global export industry posting its second consecutive year of record shipments. In 2025, global shipments fell 15.1% to 141 million bottles and revenue fell 25.3% to €2.24 billion. The category lost nearly a third of its value in three years.

The speed of the reversal is explained by a structural condition that the category’s leadership has been aware of for decades but was slow to address: cognac’s commercial model depends on two markets – the United States and China – for the majority of its global volume and a disproportionate share of its value. When both contracted simultaneously, the category had no structural buffer.

This is not the first time cognac has faced this problem. The current correction is the third major US destocking cycle since the late 1980s and the second significant China disruption since 2012. The category recovered from all of them. What the 2025 data confirms – and what the Rémy Cointreau FY2025-26 results published in April 2026 illustrate most specifically – is that the producers navigating the correction most effectively are the ones that have been quietly building outside the two core markets while the category boom disguised the need to do so.

What happened in 2025