LVMH says its wine business took a 12% hit because people are too sad to buy champagne

Jean-Jacques Guiony, LVMH’s chief financial officer, blames the drop on a “severe demand issue in champagne,” a beverage typically “linked with celebration, happiness, et cetera.” LVMH’s champagne brands include Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon, Mercier, Krug, and Moët & Chandon.

“Maybe the current global situation, be it geopolitical or macroeconomic, doesn’t lead people to cheer up and open bottles of champagne,” Guiony said on the company’s earnings call this week. “I don’t really know. The matter of fact is, is that our volumes are down double digit.” Guiony noted that the whole industry is under “severe pressure, particularly in Europe,” as consumers grapple with rising costs of consumer goods.

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Renée Zavislak, a California-based certified therapist who works with clients on their alcohol consumption, also says people are too sad to buy champagne—but for a slightly different reason. The root cause of the drop, she says, could be people realizing alcohol consumption only makes negative feelings linked to “political instability and environmental disasters” even worse.

“People have finally realized that alcohol only exacerbates anxiety and depression,” Zavislak tells Fortune. “So, yes, in a very different sense, people are too sad to buy champagne—but only because they have accepted that the champagne will only make them sadder. I have lost count of the number of clients who have either stopped drinking or who have cut back considerably.”