FRENCH traditionalists have lost their campaign to keep France’s third-biggest champagne house, Lanson, in the hands of experienced wine-makers.

Boizel Chanoine Champagne — the only champagne producer competing to buy Lanson from its founding family — was yesterday eliminated after submitting a bid judged insufficient. A private equity fund and a football millionaire are now the remaining candidates for the group that sells 18 million bottles of bubbly a year, and has a further 53 million stocked in its cellars.

The sale will confirm the spread of outside investors into the small but lucrative region of vineyards in eastern France, to the dismay of purists such as Patrick Le Brun, chairman of the General Union of Champagne Producers.

“Champagne is not a banal industrial process,” he said.

Butler Capital Partners, an equity fund created by Walter Butler, a Franco-American financier, is favourite to purchase the Lanson house after putting in a bid worth a total of €520 million (£352 million).

Mr Butler has offered €120 million for the group, which is owned by the Mora family, and agreed to take on its debts.

After Lanson confirmed the elimination of Boizel Chanoine, Mr Butler’s only rival was Jean-Claude Darmon, who made a fortune in France by selling advertising at football matches.

Lanson, which produces Besserat de Bellefon, Gauthier and Alfred Rothschild champagnes, was put up for sale by François-Xavier Mora in July. He slapped a €700 million price tag on the 245-year-old house, but swiftly had to reduce his ambitions.

Yves Dumont, chairman of the Laurent-Perrier house, said it would take at least eight years to turn around Lanson, which had suffered from rising grape prices and from its ill-fated decision to enter the cheap champagne market.

Lanson has sales of about €220 million a year — and debts of more than €410 million. Its other handicap is that it possesses only one hectare of vines. The house buys almost all its grapes from independent vineyards, who charged about €6.50 for 1.25 kilograms — the quantity used to produce one bottle — this autumn.

Last year, the French bank, Caisse d’Epargne, took a 44 per cent stake in the group after the Mora family said it was unable to pay vineyard owners.