Merchant survey 2015: GPL to be ‘best value’

Grand Puy Lacoste is expected to be the ‘best value’ wine of the 2015 en primeur campaign according to merchants in Liv-ex’s annual survey and many expected demand to for the wines to be high.

Having tipped Château Margaux as the vintage’s ‘best’ wine, for the sixth year in a row international merchants have said they expect the Pauillac fifth growth to be the ‘best value’ wine of the campaign – which is to say costing less than £500 a case on release.

Brane Cantenac, a label that has not appeared on the best value list since 2012, was placed second this time and the two Chanel properties, Canon and Rauzan-Ségla were joint third.

The top 10 value wines were:

• Grand Puy Lacoste
• Brane Cantenac
• =Canon = Rauzan-Ségla

• Carmes Haut-Brion
• Clerc Milon
• Haut Bailly
• D’Issan
• = Domaine de Chevalier = Haut Batailley = Reserve de la Comtesse

As it does every year in the survey, Liv-ex asked the merchants to put together a ‘shopping basket’ of various wines along with the expected (not desired) price for each.

As can be seen below, it is generally expected that prices will be 18% above what they were in 2014.

Interestingly, over 73% of merchants said they were expecting more demand by volume than they experienced last year.

Another 18.8% said they expected turnover to be about the same and only a very pessimistic few expected slightly less business than last year (2.9%) or “significantly” less interest than last year (4.4%).