Bordeaux climbing?

Bordeaux’s bid:offer ratio on Liv-ex has doubled over the last year in a sign that prices may be heading upwards again soon.

The bid:offer ratio takes the total value of bids on the Liv-ex exchange divided by the total value of offers. Typically, when the bid:offer ratio moves up, prices tend to follow suit.

As the chart shows, from August 2013 until the end of August 2015 the “Rest of the World” category is the only category to see its bid:offer ratio increase over the last three years while the Rhône has decreased – both of these results accurately mirror the performance of those sub-indices on the Liv-ex 1000 from 2013 onwards too.

Looking at the Burgundian, Champagne and Italian bid:offer chart and comparing it to the Liv-ex 1000, the results are uncannily similar.

Bordeaux is by far the best performer in the bid:offer ratio between August 2014 and August of this year. Having run flat between 2013 and 2014, something’s clearly cooking with Bordeaux – as has been noticed since the end of en primeurs.

The campaign was a mild disappointment as has been the pattern for a number of years now but since then Robert Parker’s 2005 retrospective sparked interest in that vintage, excitement in the 2010s has gone up too.

Mouton has continued to climb in popularity, there’s potentially a lot of value in 2012s – also noted as not as bad as sometimes cited – such as Pape Clement.

As Liv-ex reported, the Bordeaux 500 has “shown signs of recovery” and gained 1.6% last year after three years of decline.

“With demand in the marketplace increasing,” asked Liv-ex, “will prices soon follow suit?”