The market maintained its sense of robustness with November closing as the most active month of 2020 by both value and volume. Bid and Offer exposure reached an all-time high of £82m, as the global mood improved with the news of multiple Covid-19 vaccines and a potential end to uncertainty surrounding the US election.
It is interesting to note that in this record setting month Bordeaux led the charge. The region’s market share reached 42.7% on the week and 37.6% for the month, an increase on October. Bordeaux also reached bid:offer parity – generally a bid:offer ratio over 0.5 points to positive sentiment in the market.
The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 closed November up 0.5%.
Burgundy’s (17.0%) weekly share drifted but its monthly share (23.4%) remained higher than last year’s average.
Champagne (12.3%), the Rhone (4.9%), and USA (8.6%) all increased their weekly trade share.
Italy (10.2%) and Others (4.3%) drifted.
Perrier Jouet, Belle Epoque 2007 was the most traded wine by value this week. Perrier Jouet, Belle Epoque has struggled to keep up with the price performance of other Champagnes, seen in the chart below. But the 2007 vintage has been an exception to the trend. Its market price has risen 15% over the past three years and has held steady throughout 2020.
Louis Roederer, Cristal on the other hand is one of the best performers having led year-to-date performance for most of the year. The 2012 vintage has seen continued activity of late.
This week, Chateau Mouton Rothschild announced that the 2018 vintage wine label was created by the Chinese artist and writer Xu Bing. The label is composed of letters from the Latin alphabet that are structured and written to resemble Chinese characters. The price of Mouton 2018 has risen 12% since the announcement.
There remains interest around Bordeaux 2019 – Chateau Angelus 2019 was the most traded wine this week from the vintage. Eleven different Bordeaux 2019 changed hands this week including Chateau Leoville Poyferre, Chateau Pavie, and Cos D’estournel. This week, aggregated trade value in the 2019 vintage marked a doubling of that in the 2018 vintage, released a year earlier.
Liv-ex indices in November
The Liv-ex 100 increased 0.84% this November while the Liv-ex 1000 ran flat. After a difficult first half of 2020, wine prices have risen for the past six months, and the Liv-ex 100 is now at its highest point since the Autumn of 2011.
