Each month Liv-ex looks at the ‘fair-value’ price of the wines within the Bordeaux 500 to spot potential pricing anomalies. Our assumption is that when there is a close correlation between Market Price and Wine Advocate critic score, wines that trade below their estimated worth are ‘under-valued’. A wine that has consistently featured since Liv-ex started monitoring this has been Ausone 2008, which has a Market Price of £4,800, 40% below the level suggested by our ‘fair-value’ model.
However, as the chart above shows, holding Ausone for investment purposes has not been particularly successful. In the past ten years the Right Bank 50, which also includes Lafleur, Le Pin, Cheval Blanc and Petrus has increased 43%, yet Ausone’s index has fallen 35%.
The principal cause for this decline is that Ausone vintages between 2006-2011 were released at price levels that the market deemed too high and have being moving downwards since. Currently the 2006, 2007 and 2011 vintages all trade under their ex-Chateau release price, while the 2009 and 2010 are all below ex-negociant release price.
From the 2012 vintage onwards Ausone lowered their release prices to be in line with another St Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé A, Cheval Blanc. Subsequently the 2012, 2013 and 2014 vintages are all trading higher than their opening prices on the secondary market.
The question that one might ask is whether the 98 point 2008, which according to Robert Parker was ‘possibly the wine of the vintage’, has been a victim of the market over-correcting and now represents the deep value that our model suggests, or if the current Market Price is an accurate reflection of the wine’s worth.
An original version of this post was sent to Liv-ex members as a Market Update
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