Fine wine benchmarks up in January

The leading Liv-ex fine wine indices both rose in January, continuing what is now an unbroken run of monthly gains since December 2015 for the FW100.

Defying the pathological insistence among some people to commit ‘Dry January’ in what is one of the most tedious and dreary months of the year, the fine wine market has continued its strong upward movement.

The Fine Wine 100 (FW100) index – which tracks the 100 most traded labels on the Liv-ex Exchange – rose 1.25% in January bringing it up to its highest level since October 2011.

Guigal’s 2012 Côte Rôtie group of wines (the ‘La Las’) led the best-performers list for the month with Liv-ex noting that the La Landonne 2012 was upgraded to 100-points by The Wine Advocate at the end of last year.

Other strong performers included two other 100-pointers from the 2009 vintage, Pavie and Smith Haut Lafitte, as well as the 2010 Ornellaia and 2012 La Tâche.

Bordeaux dominated the labels that saw the biggest decline over the course of January including 2000 Mouton Rothschild and 2009 Haut Bailly and Léoville Las Cases – all of which have made significant gains of late.

Meanwhile, the much broader Liv-ex 1000 index made a slightly less impressive gain of 0.5% but like the Fine Wine 100 it has experienced months of consecutive rises and has hit new all-time highs for the last six months on the trot.