In April, we challenged Liv-ex members – 400 of the world’s biggest buyers and sellers of fine wine – to predict Bordeaux 2017 release prices for a basket of wines. We published their overall thoughts on the vintage here.
Now that all those wines have been released, we can look at how the predictions compared to reality. On average, merchants predicted that the basket of wines would cost €2,008.65, representing a 11.4% discount on 2016 prices. The Chateaux reduced their prices by more than expected: In reality, the basket would cost €1,851, a 17.1% discount.
Price reductions were greater than expected, but were still not enough in many cases. As our recent report on the vintage argued, it is more important to price in line with wines already in the secondary market than to offer arbitrary discounts on the previous year’s crop.
In last year’s survey, almost all (90%) of the merchants surveyed underestimated the overall cost of the group of wines, which is kept the same each year.
This year, however, 77% overestimated the total costs of the basket. Pavie was the only wine to come out above merchant’s expected price, as shown in the chart above.
Mission Haut Brion was the biggest surprise: merchants anticipated it to be released at around €283.48 per bottle, rather than the €240 it eventually came out at.
Congratulations to the winner of a double magnum of Grand Puy Lacoste 2014, whose prediction was out by just €5.70.
[mc4wp_form id=”18204″]
