Fine wines, increasingly on the negative side: the second quarter “report card” on the Liv-Ex

If in the not too distant past fine wines were considered a kind of “unicorn” for investments, that period seems to be a memory. And on the eve of the resumption of schools, to use a metaphor, the “report card” for wine investments at the end of the second four months of 2024 is merciless, unsatisfactory, it would be said, with all the main indices of the Liv-Ex, the industry’s reference platform, increasingly in the deep red, looking at the data closed as of August. The Liv-Ex 100, the platform’s main index (which includes, for Italy, Bartolo Mascarello’s Barolo 2019, Bruno Giacosa’s Barolo Falletto Vigna le Rocche Riserva 2017, Gaja’s Barbaresco 2019, Giacomo Conterno’s Barolo Monfortino Riserva 2014 and 2015, Biondi-Santi’s Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2016, Frescobaldi’s Masseto 2019 and 2020 and Ornellaia 2020, Tenuta San Guido’s Sassicaia 2018, 2019 and 2020, Antinori’s Solaia 2019 and Tignanello 2019 and 2020, and Tua Rita’s Redigaffi 2020, ed.), loses -5.4% since the beginning of the year. It does even worse for the Liv-Ex 1000, the broadest index of the “London wine exchange”, which widens its losses to a -7.3% since the beginning of the year, trailed down by the performance of the sub-indices Burgundy 150 (-10.3%, despite a very small month-on-month growth in August), Champagne 50 (-6.1%, also recovering very slightly), Bordeaux 500 (-6.9%) and so on.
The “least worst”, among all indices, continues to be the Italy 100, which stops the decline from the beginning of the year, to date, at -3%. Not the least, in the index, are some wines from some vintages in big growth, even double digits, such as Masseto 2018 (+18.6%) and 2015 (+17.9%) from the Frescobaldi group, Tenuta San Guido’s Sassicaia 2011 (+13.4%), Antinori’s Solaia 2013 (+13.1%) and Gaja’s Barbaresco 2019 (+10.5%). A complex scenario, then, which even in the very high end and collectibles market, confirms the undramatic, but not brilliant, moment of the wine market, which after years of euphoria, at every level, is increasingly grappling with a change in consumption and spending patterns, which seems to be cooling the enthusiasm not only of the wine consumer, but also of big spenders, investors and collectors. And the days when people said that investing in wine yielded more than gold (whose prices are up more than 20% in 2024, as of the beginning of the year) seem long gone.