Top 10 fine wine risers of 2016

The 10 best performing fine wine labels on the Fine Wine 1000 over the last year show there’s still room for appreciation in Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and signs of life for the Rhône.

The main fine wine market narratives this year have been; the return to prominence of Bordeaux yet also the continued broadening of the market at large to other regions.

As was recently reported, Liv-ex has noted that over the last year more than 4,000 different wines from 670 brands have traded on its exchange – up from 3,000 wines from 265 brands last year.

The best performing wine labels from December 2015 to November 2016, in many ways reflect and echo the various news flashes and analysis that cropped up throughout the year.

The Fine Wine 1000 is a collection of indices that tracks the most widely traded fine wine labels from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Italy, the Rhône and ‘Rest of the World’.

All prices are for a 12-bottle case.

10. Clarence Haut-Brion 2010

Index: Bordeaux 500
Dec 15 price: £588
Nov 16 price: £912
Change: 55.1%

Haut-Brion, a hot brand at the moment as are all the ‘second wines’ from the storied Bordeaux first growths.

Clarence de Haut-Brion has traditionally been the weaker of the second wines largely because its brand power is somewhat lesser than, say, Petit Mouton or Carruades.

Part of the reason is that until 2007 (when it went by the name of Bahans de Haut-Brion) its label bore no distinct visual link to its parent château – unlike Carruades whose label is nearly identical to the grand vin.

Post the change to ‘Clarence’ it has subsequently pursued a higher pricing policy that its weaker brand recognition can’t support.

The 2010 in particular was one of the worst performing vintages of Clarence de Haut-Brion falling 46% between release en primeur and spring of last year. This had ‘improved’ to a 44% lost by spring of 2016 and the wine is still comfortably below its initial price.

Like so many Bordeaux labels, however, this now makes it a tempting collecting/investment target for buyers wanting a slice of a big name estate.

9. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, La Tâche 2006

Index: Burgundy 150
Dec 15 price: £14,900
Nov 16 price: £23,460
Change: 57.4%

Conventional wisdom would hold that the average price of Burgundy’s most sought-after estate – now £18,141 according to the latest data in the Power 100 – is so prohibitive that there can’t possibly be any room for further appreciation.

In a sense this true but it is only absolutely true of that most storied of DRC’s vineyards – La Romanée-Conti.

Prices for that have indeed stalled quite definitively but just as there is a trickle down effect to other fine Burgundy labels, raising their price in turn, so there is within the DRC stable.

Just like second wines, if a collector finds La Romanée-Conti too expensive but still wishes to have a DRC for their portfolio then they still have La Tâche, Echèzeaux, Grands Echèzeaux, Richebourg and Romanée-St-Vivant to choose from.

The La Tâche is, already, at the upper end of the price spectrum but when one considers that the 2006 Romanée-Conti has a market price of £113,000 then £23,460 is comparatively affordable.

8. DRC, Grands Echézeaux 2011

Index: Burgundy 150
Dec 15 price: £6,450
Nov 16 price: £10,212
Change: 58.3%

An example of another DRC label that gives perhaps a better example of the point raised in the previous slide.

With a price of £10,000 a case and a market price of £11,400, this is more like the cost of a first growth from a top vintage when the market was at its peak – and the market for the very best Burgundy is definitely surging right now.

7. Petit Mouton 2006

Index: Bordeaux 500
Dec 15 price: £1,210
Nov 16 price: £1,960
Change: 61.9%

Back to another second wine, in comparison to Clarence de Haut-Brion Petit Mouton has always had a strong brand link between its various labels.

Where the 2010 Clarence had sunk over 40% since release en primeur, the 2006 Petit Mouton has appreciated over 150% and the average appreciation for its vintages between 2005 and 2014 has been 98%.

6. DRC, Grands Echézeaux 2004

DRC’s Aubert de Villaine

Index: Burgundy 150
Dec 15 price: £7,373
Nov 16 price: £12,037
Change: 63.3%

Not the most renowned of vintages in Burgundy – many reds are a rather horrible concoction of thin red fruit, peas, brambles and bitterness – DRC’s offering nevertheless picked up good scores as one would hope of a good estate.

There is also the possibility that buyers are honing in on lesser vintages due their being, at least for a time, the cheapest wines from a particular estate.

A similar thing happened with Lafite where demand for that first growth in Asia was so intense the vintage quality was almost a secondary to simply having a bottle. The 2007 for example, one of the cheapest of Lafite’s recent vintages, remains one of the most in demand vintages in Asia.

5. Salon 1997

Photography: Serge Chapuis

Index: Champagne 50
Dec 15 price: £2,363
Nov 16 price: £3,919
Change: 65.8%

The market for Champagne has gone from strength to strength in recent years. Although the Champagne 50 took a slight step backwards in volume trade this year – back to 5.3% and the third most traded group of wines – its market share is still immensely greater than the 2.8% it used to command as recently as 2014.

The market for older Champagne is particularly impressive and prices invariably rise as vintages are released and quickly absorbed into the market.

Salon is of course somewhat different as it keeps back wines so much longer than other houses but the 1997 has been out for a good eight years now and will be much in demand. Indeed, demand is now principally focused on the 2000, 2002 and 2004 vintages and, in select cases, the 2005. Anything from the 1990s is precious indeed.

The 1995 Salon to give another example had appreciated 375% between its release and June/July of 2015. Earlier this autumn Liv-ex noted the on-going success of grandes marques Champagne.

4. DRC, Echézeaux 2010

Index: Burgundy 150
Dec 15 price: £6,150
Nov 16 price: £10,638
Change: 73%

Another DRC showing that rumours of a price collapse are premature. Again, the fact that this is from as a good a vintage as 2010 and is a tenth of the price of Romanée-Conti underlines why these labels are gaining traction.

3. Paul Jaboulet Ainé, Hermitage La Chapelle 2005

Index: Rhône 100
Dec 15 price: £627
Nov 16 price: £1,115
Change: 77.8%

Previously the Rhône has been a fine wine region that has bafflingly failed to excite collectors and truly catch fire on the secondary market.

As previously examined by the drinks business, part of this problem is the sheer consistency of the vintages from year to year which makes the ‘need’ or ‘desire’ to possess one vintage over another considerably less.

The Rhône 100 sub-index began to fall from its fellow indices in 2011 when the market collapsed and that decline sped up alarmingly over the course of 2013 to early 2015, hitting a low of 154 in September last year.

Since then things have improved and the index now sits at 170 – though it still lags far, far behind the next index, the Italy 100, at a level of 244.

Jaboulet’s ‘La Chapelle’, is an emblematic label from the northern Rhône of course and sought-after enough that it is one of the few wines that might conceivably be used to headline a fine wine sale at Sotheby’s or Christie’s – and indeed it has on several occasions, particularly old and rare vintages such as the 1961.

2. Guigal, Côte Rôtie Ampuis 2010

Index: Rhône 100
Dec 15 price: £604
Nov 16 price: £1,091
Change: 80.6%

Yet another northern Rhône label which (maybe?) points to greater interest in the region going into 2017.

Not the ‘La La’s’ as one might expect but rather Guigal’s Château d’Ampuis. Whereas the more famous 2010 La Landonne was on the market in 2014 for £3,600 a case, the Ampuis was just £590.

Since then the Landonne has had rather more drastic ups and downs and has never exceeded that 2014 price (it now has a trade price of £3,570 on Liv-ex), while the Ampuis has quietly doubled.

1. Pape Clément 2009

Index: Bordeaux 500
Dec 15 price: £715
Nov 16 price: £1,388
Change: 94.1%

Robert Parker stepped back completely from reviewing Bordeaux in 2016 – handing over his duties at The Wine Advocate to Neal Martin.

This prompted db to ask whether his 100-point wines would gain an ever greater caché among collectors – and for others to question or even celebrate the end of his influence and what it meant for Bordeaux in particular.

Anyone who thought that what Parker had to say was now an irrelevance was very rudely corrected earlier this year when, in his Hedonist’s Gazette, he gave the 2009 Pape Clément one of his famous 100-point scores.

Despite not being an ‘official’ TWA rating it nonetheless prompted a flurry of fevered trading in the wine.

It might have been brief but shortly after the news went out in April the wine saw a 35% increase in value, rising from £835 to £1,130 a case, a level at which it has more or less stayed; slightly increased even.

Parker and his scores’ powers haven’t quite waned yet.