Quiet July for fine wine

July was a reasonably quiet month for fine wine with the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 running flat and the broader Fine Wine 1000 rising a scanty 0.9%.

The Fine Wine 100, which tracks the 100 most widely traded labels on the Exchange, ran flat with just a 0.04% ‘rise’ over July’s trading. Nonetheless, the index is now almost at its highest point since October 2011.

Burgundy labels dominated the best-performing labels last month, well and truly in line with Liv-ex’s earlier report that the French region (and others) was building a greater share of trade at Bordeaux’s expense.

Ponsot’s 2012 Clos de la Roche Vieilles Vignes was up 11.6% to a mid price of £4,338 and Armand Rousseau’s 2012 Chambertin and Comte de Vogüé’s 2014 Musigny Vieilles Vignes were the other Côte d’Or labels on the up as were Masseto’s 2013 vintage and Haut-Brion’s 2005 which reversed its June losses.

Going down meanwhile were a number of wines with 100-point scores from Robert Parker including Smith Haut-Lafitte’s 2009 and Haut-Brion’s 2010. Angélus’s 2009 and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s 2012 Richebourg saw respective declines of 5% and 3.9%, while Léoville Poyferré’s 2009 was the month’s biggest ‘loser’ – down 7.7%.

The broader Fine Wine 1000 meanwhile saw a touch more growth, not much, but enough to mean the index is now up 15.9% year-on-year.

In contrast to Bordeaux’s decline elsewhere, it was in fact the Bordeaux Legends 50 sub-index which led the way in July, gaining 2%.

Other strong performances came from the Italy 100 (up 1.5%) and Champagne 50 (up 1%), recovering from some June declines. The Italy 100 is actually the mot improved index in 2017, up 7.7% on the year to date.

The Rest of the World 50 ran flat and the Rhône 100, after a positive start to the year, fell a little (0.5%).

Index changes: Liv-ex also announced some minor changes to both indices to better reflect the market.

The 2004 vintage has been removed from the Bordeaux 500 index to make way for the now physical 2014s and 17 wines have been removed from the Fine Wine 100 and replaced with 17 wines that are either more recent vintages of the same wine or are wines seeing a greater cut of trading activity.

The list of wines that have been taken out and which have replaced them can be see here.