An interview with our CEO, James Miles, to mark 25 years of Liv-ex.
Liv-ex, where did it all begin?
Twenty-five years ago, my friend Justin Gibbs and I left well-paid careers in the City to start something completely different: an exchange for fine wine. Liv-ex was born above a barber shop and pizza joint on Lavender Hill in Battersea (a London suburb). Our first office was freezing in winter, stifling in summer, and so noisy that early customers thought we were working in the street.
What were you trying to achieve by starting Liv-ex?
Our idea was simple, if ambitious… To create a stock market for wine merchants. We called it the London International Vintners Exchange—shortened to Liv-ex—a name that captured exactly what we were trying to build.
Back then, wine trading felt stuck in the past. Deals were made over the phone or by fax. Prices were opaque. Processes were slow, inefficient and risky. But to us, it looked a lot like the equities market—fragmented by both products and players, with similar issues around trading, settlement and price discovery. In equities, those problems had largely been solved by electronic exchanges. We believed something similar could be done for wine. Our vision was to make the wine market more transparent, efficient, and safe and, in so doing, increase activity and the size of the market for everyone’s benefit.
What did Liv-ex look like 25 years ago?
Our first platform was painfully slow, running on dial-up internet. Justin and I quickly realised that if this was going to work, we’d need to build liquidity ourselves—calling customers, collecting stock lists in Excel, and inputting orders manually. We also began building a basic database to help us understand how the market was shaped and priced.
In July 2000, we launched Liv-ex with just 12 London-based members, all of whom agreed to work with us for free! It was the middle of the dot-com crash. Capital was scarce, but we raised a seed round from friends and family in December that year, started charging in January 2001, and began slowly growing our customer base across the UK, then into Bordeaux, Europe, Asia, and the US.
How has Liv-ex evolved over the years?
One of our earliest—and most transformative—innovations was the introduction of the Standard In Bond (SIB) contract. We needed a consistent, trusted framework to help members trade confidently. The SIB contract defined that any wine traded on Liv-ex had to be in bond, in its original packaging, in good condition, and settled within 14 days. Importantly, any bid or offer on the platform had to be a firm commitment—not subject to availability or confirmation.
This changed everything. It eliminated uncertainty, introduced real-time pricing, and created liquidity. Unlike auctions, where every lot is unique, the SIB contract made fine wine trading fungible. An SIB case of Lafite 2000 is interchangeable with another SIB case of Lafite 2000—standardised, comparable, and easy to price accurately.
By 2002, we had developed the ability to act as a central counterparty, anonymising trades and taking care of settlement. That meant buyers and sellers no longer had to interact directly—we handled the risk, the paperwork, and the logistics.
The arrival of broadband, followed by China’s emergence as a major market, gave the business a real boost. From there, we introduced tools and innovations that have since become industry standards like Liv-ex indices, market intelligence, LWIN (our unique wine identifier), and our suite of APIs.
And where is Liv-ex now?
Now, 25 years on, Liv-ex is home to the world’s largest business-to-business network of fine wine buyers and sellers. Justin and I have been fortunate to work with an incredible team, and to serve a global community of members who have trusted us along the way.
We’ve loved every moment of the journey so far—and we’re more excited than ever about the opportunity that lies ahead.
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