Majestic Wine sparkles

Majestic Wine said Italy's prosecco was the sparkling wine of choice this Christmas.

The wine warehouse chain also said it planned to open a similar number of stores next year to the 16 planned for 2012-13, but a marginal slowdown in its sales growth led City analysts to downgrade their profits forecasts for the year to March. Sales of prosecco surged by 20 per cent. But Investec downgraded profit forecasts to £23.6m.