Liv-ex: Italian labels are worth 17% of the fine wine market: Barolo and Brunello at the top

Italian investment wines have definitely blossomed on the secondary market. To confirm this, once again, the data of the first quarter of 2021 of Liv-ex, the reference index of the secondary market of fine wines, which underlines how Italian wine, saved in 2020 from US tariffs, and free from the complexity of the Bordeaux market, anchored to the mechanism of en primeur, offers an increasingly important number of opportunities and labels, in the wake of what was done last year. Thus, in the first three months of 2021, in which the value of bottles traded on Liv-ex grew by +124.8% over the first three months of 2020, and the number of buyers jumped by 45%, Italy came to represent 17% of market share in value, up from 15.1% in 2020 and 8.8% in 2019.
As in 2020, Barolo is the most traded denomination in Italy, Tuscany (which is not a denomination, ed.) remains in second place, while Brunello di Montalcino, exploiting the wave of the last two incredible vintages on the market - 2015 and 2016, celebrated by international critics - has climbed three positions, and is now the third most traded denomination, in value, in 2021. Behind, there are Bolgheri and Barbaresco to complete the top five, but by now there are 40 appellations or geographical indications routinely traded on Liv-ex, almost twice as many as in 2020. So much so that the turnover of Italian labels, since the beginning of 2021, has exceeded 10 million euros, reaching Burgundy in value.
In the top ten of the most traded labels, by value, of this first part of the year, there are a few surprises. In fact, at the top, there is Redigaffi 2018 by Tua Rita, followed by Sassicaia 2018 by Tenuta San Guido and Barolo Monfortino Riserva 2014 by Giacomo Conterno, king of auctions and among the most sought-after labels by collectors from all over the world. Sassicaia again at the fourth position, with the 2017 vintage, then again Giacomo Conterno, with the 2016 Barolo Francia, a result that follows a bit the dynamics of the second wines of the Chateaux of Bordeaux. At position number 6 is Bartolo Mascarello’s Barolo 2016, Sassicaia again, the 2016 vintage, G. B. Burlotto’s Barolo Monvigliero 2016 and, lastly, Masseto, with two different vintages, 2017 and 2015.