May can’t halt fine wine’s slow decline

The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 index continued its glacial downward turn in May but it was a good month for the ‘La Las’ and the wider market saw a small uptick.

The benchmark FW100 index has been in very gradual decline since the end of last year and went down a further 0.2% last month.

Guigal’s 2014 La Mouline and La Landonne were the best performing labels last month, rising 10.1% and 7.1% respectively, as Liv-ex pointed out.

Armand Rousseau’s 2015 Chambertin was up 4.5%, Cheval Blanc 2006 4.2% and Opus One’s 2014 climbed 4.1%.

But what was a good month for one label was a bad one for another, Beaucastel’s 2015 Chateauneuf du Pape climbed 18% in April but crashed back 16.8% last month.

Also flipping back into downward turns were Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s 2014 La Tâche, Comte de Vogüé’s 2014 Musigny Vieilles Vignes, 2001 Yquem and Tignanello’s 2015.

But if the 100 most-traded labels were having an up and down month, the much broader index, the Fine Wine 1000 ran flat in May after a small 0.1% flutter.

The Bordeaux Legends 50 was the biggest riser in May, followed by the Rhône 100 and Italy 100 – the latter being the only sub-index to show positive gains on the year-to-date.

The Champagne 50 and Rest of the World 50 were the weakest sub-indices.