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 this week, 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 a pizza place on Lavender Hill in Battersea. Our first office was freezing in winter, stifling in summer, and so noisy that early customers thought we were working out on the street.
What were you trying to achieve by starting Liv-ex?
The 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 aiming to build.
Back then, wine trading felt stuck in the past. Deals were made over the phone. Prices were opaque. Processes were slow. But to us, it looked a lot like the equities market—fragmented by products and players, with similar issues around trading, liquidity, and price discovery. In equities, those problems were being solved by electronic exchanges. We believed wine deserved the same.
So we set out to make wine trading more transparent, efficient, and safe.
What did the business 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 understand how the market was shaped and priced.
In July 2000, we launched Liv-ex with just 12 London-based members, all of whom generously agreed to work with us—without charge. 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 eventually the US.
How has Liv-ex evolved over the past 25 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 just a vague intention.
This changed everything. It eliminated uncertainty, introduced real-time pricing, and allowed for true liquidity. Unlike auctions, where every lot is unique, SIB made fine wine trading fungible. A case of Lafite 2000 is a case of Lafite 2000—standardised, comparable, and easier 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: Liv-ex indices, market intelligence, the LWIN 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 network of fine wine buyers and sellers. We’ve 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 what’s ahead.
