Eastern Europeans are drinking more champagne than the French; the French are guzzling more scotch than the British and Singaporeans cannot get enough sparkling wine, according to a study by Datamonitor, the research group, reports the Financial Times.

Global champagne sales are going flat, not least in their home market. The French are now reported to prefer a glass of Spanish cava or German sekt to a flute of Dom Perignon. This week Jacques Chirac characteristically claimed good wine as a stamp of French 'bon gout' by giving Tony Blair a gift of six bottles of 1989 Chateau Mouton Rothschild for his 50th birthday.

The Datamonitor research into the global wine industry indicates that new world wines are gaining increasing status over French champagne. Fewer and fewer people consider it worth paying an average global price of $25 (£15.60) for a bottle of champagne compared with $4.80 for a sparkling wine equivalent.

However, the UK was one of the few markets where champagne sales rose last year, partly because bottles are getting cheaper there. Prices peaked in 1999, but have now fallen as wine merchants cut prices under pressure from cheaper substitutes.

The European market for flavoured alcoholic beverages is growing rapidly. Last year it was worth $4.9bn, up from $1.8bn in 1997. Analysts attribute the growth in part to innovative marketing. Meanwhile scotch is starting to come under pressure from vodka, which has become the favourite spirit in the UK for tipplers aged between 18 and 24.