Fine wine remains buyers’ market during Q2

The fine wine market remained a buyers’ market as prices continued to decline during the second quarter of the year, Wine Cap’s latest report has said.

However, despite the falling prices, trade volumes are higher than they were at the same time last year, with buyers seizing the opportunities  presented by a slow market to acquire wines at favourable prices.

As a result, some of the best-performing wines of the quarter rose as much as 20% in value, the report noted, proving that “there are opportunities to be had if one follows closely.”

Some of these opportunities came on the back of this year’s primeur campaign, a high quality vintage, in which some of the wines offered good value with “significant potential for future price appreciation”, it said – although these were nevertheless “few and far between given the scale of the campaign”.

Among the notable 2023 wines were Beychevelle, Cheval Blanc, and the First Growths’ Grand vins and second wines, but with the new releases, and the prices of Bordeaux falling 1.8%, back vintages became more attractive. While the Liv-ex 1000 index dipped 2.4%, Liv-ex’s Bordeaux Legends 40 (a sub-index of Bordeaux wines from exceptional older vintages, from 1989), rose 0.3% rise in June, its first positive movement in almost a year.

Elsewhere, there was a decline in Burgundy and Champagne, with Liv-ex’  Burgundy 150 falling -3.9%, and the Champagne 50  falling -3.7%, ahead of the Rest of the World 60 (down 1.1%) and the Italy 100 indices (down 1.2%). As Wine Cap noted, some Italian brands even recorded positive movement – as high as 15% – in the last six months.

Top performers

According to Wine Cap, the best-performing wine this quarter was the 100-point Château Léoville Las Cases 2016, which saw an impressive rise of 19.4%, a fraction ahead of Château Angelus, which rose 19.1%.  One other Bordeaux made the top ten, Chateau Coutet, in sixth place with a 12.2% increase.

Meanwhile from Burgundy, Domaine Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru 2020 rose 15.2%, along with Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache Grand Cru 2017 (ranking third and fifth respectively), up 12.7% along with Coche-Dury Meursault 2018 (up 10.8%) in seventh place.

Wines from Piedmont, Champagne and the Rhone also secured places in  the top ten, with Gaja, Barbaresco 2013 up 14.6%, Dom Pérignon Rosé 2009 up 9.6% and Domaine du Pegau, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, cuvee Reservee Rouge 2016 in tenth place (up 7.9%).