In November Liv-ex released the 2014 Power 100 – our annual list of the most powerful brands in the fine wine market. For the second year in a row, Pavie was top of the table, although the list in general reflected buyers broadening their tastes.
The full report on the 2014 Liv-ex Power 100 can be found in the December edition of the Drinks Business.
Value brands
Wines from nine different regions featured amongst the top 20 this year: the largest range in the nine years of publishing the list. We decided to reconstruct the Power 100 to see which wines offer value for money. In order to identify lower-priced buying opportunities, we removed all of the brands that have a market price of more than an average of £2,000 per case (based on vintages traded Sep 2013 – Aug 2014). We then ranked the brands according to their average price (the lower the price, the better the ranking), average score, one-year performance and the number of vintages traded. The results are shown below.
Wines from the Rhône performed particularly well on this scale, representing four of the top ten. In the original Power 100, only one of the top ten came from the Rhône – Guigal came in at number eight. Bordeaux is also well represented in this alternative list, accounting for nine of the top twenty value brands. While the wines of Bordeaux and the Rhône have not generally performed as well as other regions since market peak, they are boosted by high scores and low prices. Indeed, of the top 20 wines above, 14 trade for an average price of under £1,000 a case.
Value Bordeaux
With Bordeaux well represented, we next created a value table using the same methodology as above but focusing solely on Bordeaux wines with an average score of more than 90 points. This left us with 41 chateaux.
Smith Haut Lafitte, which was third on the value brands table last year, has climbed to top of this year’s table due to its strong all-round performance in the rankings: it has a relatively low average price which has not dropped as much as some other wines on the list. Pape Clement, top of the value list last year, has dropped to number 7 in 2014 as its price ranking and performance slips below other brands. Right Bank Monbousquet, a new entrant to the Power 100 this year, stands out for its strong price performance, seeing an increase of 14.9%. By way of comparison, the weakest brand by price performance on the list, Duhart Milon, saw declines of 14.6%.
Pavie – top of the 2014 Power 100 – also ranks highly in the Bordeaux value chart, finding itself in third place. Although it is the second most expensive brand on the list (only Angelus is more), it is boosted by its relatively strong performance and high average score.
