Fine wine market’s decline pauses

The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 index saw a (very) small rise in June, the first month without a decline of any sort for the first time this year.

The ‘rise’, was a rather meagre 0.47% on May’s closing level so really the benchmark index has run flat but it is the first positive result since last year.

Château Palmer’s 2009 vintage was the month’s best-performing wine, up 9% while Lafite’s 2010, Beaucastel’s 2015 Châteauneuf du Pape (which dropped back sharply in May), Giacomo Conterno’s 2010 Monfortino and Clos des Pape’s 2015 Châteauneuf were all up 7%.

Armand Rousseau’s 2015 Chambertin on the other hand which is currently “undulating” in the secondary market as Liv-ex noted, was down 11%.

Montrose 2000, Latour 2003 and Haut-Brion 2015 were three more Bordeaux labels that declined in June.

Update

Liv-ex also announced that it would soon be updating the components of the Fine Wine 100 index to clean out wines that have not seen “regular activity” over the last 24 months.

There are 28 changes forecast for this review and the change is particularly rough on Bordeaux which sees the number of its wines in the index cut from 67 to 50 – reflecting the region’s shrinking market share – while seven wines each from Burgundy and Italy have been added and three from Champagne.

Many of the wines being removed are from older vintages, including a fair amount of pre-2010 claret but also some 2014 and 2015 Burgundy.

Most of what is being added is from 2015 and 2016 across France and Italy and more recent vintage releases from Champagne – namely the 2008.

For the full changes click here.