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Upward
The release of Cheval Blanc 2015 on Tuesday marked the end of this year’s En Primeur campaign. Only a handful of wines from the vintage – those offered later in bottle, or via agencies only – are yet to be released.
Yesterday, Liv-ex published the results of a survey where its merchant members were challenged to predict the release prices of a basket of wines. The average increase predicted was 17.8%; the reality was a 45.8% increase for the basket. Hardly any merchants overestimated.
When Liv-ex first published the chart above two weeks ago, Canon – up a high 56% on 2014 – looked almost anomalous. It now has company, with wines such as Ducru Beaucaillou (+52%) and Figeac (+70%) similarly upping their release prices. Mission Haut Brion is now the stand-out. It flew off the original chart when its 2015 came out a whopping 107% higher than the 2014.
Collectively this illustrates one central theme of this year’s campaign: price hikes on 2014 have significantly exceeded expectation – and the increases increased as the campaign went on.
Onward
Liv-ex will publish a concluding report on Bordeaux 2015 in two weeks’ time. It will be distributed to all merchant members. If you are a private collector, you will be able to access an abridged version via your Cellar Watch subscription.
Fine wine market analysis will continue as usual on the blog. Over the coming weeks and months, Liv-ex will explore regions outside of Bordeaux to look at market trends from Italy, Burgundy, Champagne and beyond. From Bordeaux, analysis will be published on 2005 to show what has happened since Robert Parker’s ten year retrospective review of the vintage one year ago.
A number of interviews with leading critics and Chateaux are also planned. You can find all recent interviews here.
We hope that you have found – and will continue to find – the analysis on the Liv-ex blog helpful.
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