Top 10 Power List 100 price performers

Comparing the market price for a case of wine traded on Liv-ex on 1st September 2013 with the market price a year later, makes for a revealing top 10.

Burgundy’s Domaine Dujac – the best in price performance
(2014 Liv-ex Power 100)

Year on year price performance is one of the five component parts to the annual Liv-ex Power 100 list. Looked at on its own, it reveals: “a pretty disparate bunch of wines,” said Joss Fowler, Fine & Rare’s fine wine director. “Dujac and Cathiard at the top shows the growing interest in Burgundy which makes up six out of the top ten. Monbousquet is the sole Bordeaux and that’s just odd.”

Bordeaux’s poor showing on price performance over the period is no surprise given the slide in key indices like the Liv-ex 100 in the year to 31^st August. Quite why the Saint-Émilion Grand cru classé Château Monbousquet, is the only claret to make the list is something of a mystery. “Yes it is a bit random,” admitted Liv-ex director, Justin Gibbs. “The big story for the fine wine market was that it was another tough year, but in amongst that various things shone and one of the best-performing indices remains Burgundy.”

Gary Boom, MD of Bordeaux Index, felt the list was “not really representative,” because of the low volumes traded, and on that measure he has a point. Volume share ranged from 0.51% for Almaviva to just 0.03% for Georges Roumier. To put that in context Château Lafite Rothschild accounted for 5.74% of trade by volume on the 2014 Power 100 list. Boom said that a similar list from Bordeaux Index would have included Domaine de la Romanée Conti, though on Liv-ex its price increased by only 3.06% over the period.

Instead of well-known First Growth brands, this top ten is heavily skewed towards niche Burgundy. “It shows that price performance wasn’t coming from speculation, but from quality and rarity,” said Fowler. “If you ran the same list seven years ago, I’m sure you’d see Lafite, Mouton and Latour.”