Fine wine reverses April losses

Gains of 1% and 1.1% respectively for the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 and 1000 indices have completely reversed a small April dip and leaves the secondary market in its highest position since October 2011.

The Fine Wine 100 declined 0.5% in April after an unprecedented 17-month run of consecutive gains.

Much of this ground was won back in May with a 0.4% rise and the 1% bounce seen in June has completely eradicated the small dip.

Closing last month on 307.1, the index tracking the 100 most widely traded fine wine labels, is now at its highest level since the winter of 2011.

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s La Tâche was particularly successful, with its 2011 and 2012 vintages both seeing double digit increases, while Opus One’s 2012 and the 2010 vintages of Léoville Poyferré and Solaia were also on the rise.

Going down by contrast were Rhône labels Beaucastel and Paul Jaboulet Aîné (their Châteauneuf du Pape and Hermitage La Chapelle respectively) and Bordeaux labels Haut-Brion, Margaux and Léoville Las Cases.

The much broader Fine Wine 1000 meanwhile went up 1.1% in June with the Rest of the World 50 sub-index recording almost a 3% gain. The Rhône, Burgundy and Bordeaux indices also continued to move up but the Champagne 50 and Italy 100 declined a little – 0.23% and 0.31% respectively. They both remain up on the year-to-date however.

Also, Liv-ex announced that it has updated its first growth index, the Fine Wine 50, and that the 2004 vintage has been removed to make way for the now physical 2014s.

That is, except for the Latour index which will continue to track the most recent physical vintages which, until the release of the 2012 at some point in the future, continue to be 2002-2011.