Sauternes 50 taking turn for the sweeter?

Liv-ex’s index tracking the most widely traded Sauternes has long been an under-performer but has seen an uptick in its fortunes of late.

As noted by Liv-ex, the Sauternes 50 used to outperform the broader Bordeaux 500 index until 2009 when the latter took off and the former ran flat for a while and then suffered several years of decline from 2011 to 2016.

More recently, however, its fortunes have taken a turn for the better and so far this year it has risen 7% – which is better than the 5% seen by the Bordeaux 500 as a whole.

Of all the sub-indices on the Bordeaux 500, only the Second Wine 50 has performed better

There has been some good activity on older vintages of Yquem of late Liv-ex reports and Yquem and Rieussec were high up in the list of best-performing labels of the year so far.

Coutet however is the best-performing Sauternes in the Sauternes 50 while Climens is the worst – and it is the worst-performing label of the entire Bordeaux 500 at this point in the year.