Fine wine prices are falling, but the sky is not falling with them – and, in fact, the savvy wine drinker might find a few opportunities to drink some older wines at a good price.
The Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 index, which measures the secondary-market prices of 1000 most-traded wines, has been dropping for seven months and dropped by 2.4 percent in May, its largest single-month decline of the downturn. The index is down 4.8 percent for the year so far.
This downturn is unusual because the index rose consistently for seven years, even during the early stages of the pandemic, before hitting a speedbump last November.
Justin Gibbs, deputy chairman of Liv-Ex, told Wine-Searcher that the drop is likely more reflective of economic conditions outside the wine world than of a diminishing appetite for fine wine. Gibbs said that, in addition to economic uncertainty putting a slight damper on enthusiastic spending, inflation has increased the interest rates for cash investments, which makes buyers a bit less interested in other types of investment.
Gibbs said the ongoing Bordeaux en primeur futures campaign is also attracting attention away from the already-on-the-market wines that make up the Liv-Ex index.
"Bordeaux 2022, which is regarded by many as one of the great vintages, has been priced at unpalatable levels," Gibbs said. "You have the secondary market turning down while the Bordelais are pushing prices up. We have an average increase in price over last year [for Bordeaux futures] of 19 percent."
In economic theory, that should lead people to buy already bottled wines from prior vintages; they are ready to drink, they are cheaper and Bordeaux has had several other acclaimed vintages in the past decade.
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