Cellar Watch website relaunches

Liv-ex has relaunched its consumer platform, Cellar Watch, as a standalone website.

The site, which is free, is a “wine price and cellar valuation tool” and is designed to give consumers similar access to the sort of information the trade receives from Liv-ex’s platform.

The site will allow users to search for prices both current and historic, monitor trading activity on the exchange, track the performance of their own cellars and watch the market courtesy of a monthly report.

Basic packages are free and allow consumers to search over 10 million lines of data on 100,000 wines, however, subscriptions starting at £5.99 a month provide more reports and insight into the market and emerging trends.

So far, 20,000 people have registered some four million bottles with average collections being worth around £56,000.

Bordeaux and Burgundy dominate the collections by value and Pontet Canet 2009 is the most popular wine, although Lafite 1996, with 12,700 bottles registered, is the highest by value at £9m.

Director James Miles said: “Whether you are a merchant or a consumer, it is important to know the value – and price history – of a wine before you buy or sell. Cellar Watch gives collectors access to Liv-ex’s industry benchmark prices, a level of transparency previously only available to professionals.”