Liv-ex FAQ

Liv-ex is the global marketplace for the wine trade. We have over 600 members, from start-ups to established merchants. We give them the tools they need to price, buy and sell wine more efficiently. 

There are currently over £80m of live trading opportunities for buyers and sellers, ranging from everyday drinking wine to fine and rare bottles. Liv-ex makes sure that every trade is settled efficiently. Our logistics and accounts teams ensure that buyers get their wine and sellers get their money quickly. 

Membership is available exclusively to wine businesses. Merchants, courtiers, negotiants, producers, auction houses and wine investment funds can trade anonymously on the platform and make use of our data insights. Additionally, producers can access data-only membership. 

Wine businesses who want to find out more can request a personalised demo from the Liv-ex team. 

Membership of Liv-ex is open to most wine businesses, including merchants, courtiers, negotiants, producers, importers, auction houses and wine investment funds. 

Trading membership of Liv-ex reserved for professional buyers and sellers of fine wine, i.e. wine merchants. Each member is checked and approved by our membership committee with industry references being taken up. 

Data-only membership is available for other wine businesses. It provides access our insights and our unique pricing data, which helps you to understand current values and pricing trends. 

You can find information about packages on the pricing page. 

Liv-ex does not and never will allow private collectors to trade on the market. If you are a fine wine enthusiast, you are advised to contact your wine merchant, who can trade on Liv-ex on your behalf. Many merchants are also able to provide you with valuation information using Liv-ex data. 

First, complete this short form. A friendly member of the team will contact you within one working day to get you started.

Many blogs and reports are now available exclusively to Liv-ex members. If you represent a wine business, you are welcome to enquire about membership. 

If you are a private collector, you can access free posts on the Liv-ex blog. Many reports are also available for free. Several merchants also share analysis from Liv-ex with their customers. 

Liv-ex has always been, and always will be, truly independent. Our business is built upon this principle. We do not hold stock and nor do we transact on the exchange. The prices and data you see reflect the real-time trading activity of hundreds of wine businesses worldwide – independent data, direct from the market. Find out more

We are happy to help members of the press with price information, index series, and comment. Click here to get in touch. 

We will do our best to accommodate academic requests for data but cannot guarantee a response due to the volume of requests we receive. Contact us with your request.  

You are welcome to use charts from Liv-ex.com, reports, or blogs. Please cite Liv-ex as the source, with a link back to our site.  

We ask that you don’t copy/paste written content, though you are welcome to selectively quote it (as a journalist would do).  

This is all subject to fair use. We reserve the right to ask you to reduce the volume of Liv-ex content that you use. 

If you are a private collector, you may have Cellar Watch account. Cellar Watch has been sold to Vinous, but you should still be able to access your account. Visit cellar-watch.com and try to log in there. If your password doesn’t work, follow instructions on the site. Liv-ex no longer manages Cellar Watch and will not be able to help with any access issues. 

 If you are a wine business and a professional member of Liv-ex, click here to reset your password. If you are still experiencing problems, please contact your account manager. 

Everyone understands the significant benefits technology can bring, yet mastering new online tools or processes can naturally feel daunting. Many who join Liv-ex report it being considerably less time-consuming than they had assumed, and frequently tell their Account Manager how much more efficient it is to price, buy or sell wine on Liv-ex. Find out more

Liv-ex membership is offered exclusively to reputable wine businesses from across the world. Members range from startups to established merchants. Liv-ex offers anonymous trading, and therefore has a policy of not disclosing the identity of our members without their express permission. Some members do publicly disclose their membership. Liv-ex monitors such disclosures and will request any false disclosures to be removed. If a member gives us written permission to confirm their membership with you directly, we’ll be happy to do so.

Liv-ex exists to make trading fine wine more transparent, efficient, and safe. We invest heavily in our processes and systems, have risk measures in place, and undertake detailed due diligence on our members. However, Liv-ex is not a trade body nor a regulator. Our relationship with our members is on an arm’s length basis. We have no oversight or jurisdiction over our members’ controls, records, or dealings with their customers. Liv-ex only accepts wine businesses as members, not private individuals.

The Liv-ex database contains 780m+ lines of accurate wine price information, dating back over 20 years.  

A range of price points are available, including Market Price (listed price), last trade price, and current bid/offers. You can find out more here. 

The Market Price is the best listed price for a wine in the secondary market. Unless otherwise stated, it is standardised to 12x75cl. A full explanation is available here.

The mid-point between the highest live bid and lowest live offer on the market, validated against additional data including transaction prices. Mid-prices are used to calculate the Liv-ex indices and value the world’s leading fine wine funds. 

Prices given are for 12x75cl trades, or 6x75cl converted to a 12x75cl price. 

Liv-ex prices are standardised to 12×75 (9-litre) case values unless otherwise stated. 

Prices are reflective of wine held in bond. This means that they exclude any taxes, which vary according to country. 

Other sources of fine wine price information and indices base their calculations on list prices. These are advertised prices, sometimes collected from sellers who may be advertising wine that they don’t even have in stock. There is no firm commitment to buy or sell at an advertised price. The real value of the wine may be higher or lower than listed. 

Liv-ex can uniquely provide you with prices from real merchant transactions. These are historic trade prices, as well as firm commitments to buy or sell on the market at a given price. All transactions are standardised by condition and tax status, allowing you to make like-for-like comparisons. Our members value this because this because it is real, proven price information. 

Liv-ex members have various tools available to them to create fast, accurate valuations. Wine Matcher and automation both enable this. If you are a business outside of the wine trade (e.g., an insurance underwriter), we can offer a quote for a one-off valuation. Click here to enquire.  

If you are a private collector who is looking to value your cellar, we suggest trying Cellar Watch. Many reputable merchants also offer valuation services for private collectors using Liv-ex data as complimentary. 

Liv-ex uses regression analysis to plot release prices against the quality of the wine based on important critic scores and vintages. You can find more details here. 

These analyses are available to Liv-ex members on Silver+ packages through the Fair Value tool available to them. 

Fine wine indices measure the movements of a pool of actively traded investment wines and reflect sentiment toward different fine wine-producing regions. They are thus vital in understanding the fine wine market dynamic, and its historic and possible future performance. Find out more

Liv-ex has created several indices to track the price of fine wine, including the industry benchmark Liv-ex 100. You can find them on the indices page, which is part of the news & insights section. 

All Liv-ex indices are calculated using the Liv-ex Mid Price. The Mid Price, which is based on merchant transactions, is the most robust measure for pricing wines available in the market. It is calculated by finding the midpoint between the current highest bid price and lowest offer price on the Liv-ex trading platform. Each price is then verified by our valuation committee to ensure that the number is robust after considering all data at our disposal, including merchant offer prices and historical Liv-ex transaction prices. 

Tools are available to chart the movement of prices for individual wines and baskets of similar wines against other asset classes. The tools help determine whether prices are likely to rise or fall and whether a wine is worth its selling price. Find out more. 

Much like broadband, our membership packages come with a data allowance to reflect the typical needs of members on each package. The more sophisticated and frequent users pay higher fees for a higher allowance. Click here to view our membership packages.

You can access invoices and net statements through the Account Overview page on the Liv-ex website. Go to the Your Account > Account Overview > Invoices & Net Statements tab.

This is the main page where you can select different dates to view and then either download or email to yourself. 

You can also go to Invoices and Net Statements directly from the Account Overview page

• SI – Sales invoice
• SC – Sales credit (credit notes issued by Liv-ex)
• SR – Sales receipt (these are payments sent by member [you] to Liv-ex)

• PI – Purchase invoice
• PC – Purchase credit (these are credits/discounts given by the seller)
• PP – Purchase payment (Liv-ex payment sent to seller)

CR is the reference that Liv-ex uses when entering payments received. If CR is showing as the reference on a line of the Net statement, this indicates that a payment is part allocated. Or it is credit from a lump sum payment on your account ready to be allocated to future invoices.

Contra is the term for netting off the sales invoices and purchase invoices in your account on a weekly basis. This leaves a net payment due, either to you, or to Liv-ex. This is done each Friday when the net statements are created. Please refer to the statements for the breakdown.

If you send the total of the purchase invoices to Liv-ex and it reaches us by Tuesday of each week, Liv-ex will pay the remaining balance.

Or instead of a weekly payment, you can send a lump sum payment, where we keep this as credit on your account and will auto-allocate against future invoices. Thus, we will pay the total amount of your sales separately.

Please note that it is common for bank transfers to take three working days to reach UK bank accounts. This means that payments should be initiated on Friday (following receipt of the net statement) to clear our account by Tuesday.

On every page there will be a Net amount payable figure which is updated weekly. This figure may differ to the statement due to En Primeur trades. Please refer to the statement for the accurate balance to pay/to be paid. 

Please provide either the Liv-ex invoice number or the LX trade number (eg: LX xxxxxx), followed by your company name.

Alternatively, if you are paying the amount as per the set statement you can reference the net statement date and company name.

Liv-ex does not recognise any other information such as PO numbers.

If you are unable to enter references to your payment when making a bank transfer, please send an email with the allocation details to [email protected].

Net statements are run each Friday. The payment runs are processed the following Wednesday. Bank transfers take three working days so payment should be received into your account on the Friday following the net statement, i.e., one week later.

Payment received should be as per the most recent net statement.

There may be a timing issue between our records and yours if you have sent a payment Liv-ex which we have not received and allocated before the weekly payment run is initiated.

If there is a discrepancy that you are struggling to reconcile, please contact [email protected].

This is the amount you owe to Liv-ex (Red) or Liv-ex owes to you (Green) as per your most recent net statement. This number updates every Friday.

The Net Statement number is updated weekly, every Friday. Any payments made prior to this, will not be reflected here until this day. You can still find individual invoices under Invoices & Net Statements page, for which status will be updated once the payment is received (which could take between 2-3 working days from the day of payment).  

Headroom will decrease once a trade has taken place.

To increase the buying headroom, you are advised to either pay for trades once they are invoiced or send a lump sum payment to increase your headroom.

The selling headroom will increase once any sold stock is received into Liv-ex warehouse, checked and invoiced.

Your Account > Account Overview > Open Trades tab. The status of trades will show below on the Recent Activity section. 

Please see this page for definitions of trade status terms.

Please contact [email protected]

Please contact your Account Manager to discuss.

Our payment terms are 7 days from when the statement is issued. If you do not pay within these terms, your account will be held with restrictions affecting your trading or/and releases of stock.

If it has been more than 3 working days since payment was sent and you have provided Liv-ex with details of how to allocate but the trade is still showing as unpaid, please contact [email protected]

An LWIN (Liv-ex Wine Identification Number) is 7-, 11-, 16 or 18-digit numbers, depending on the level of detail. They act like an ISBN for wine and spirits, allowing information about wine to be transferred seamlessly between systems.  

You can find out more about LWIN on our website, or download our short introductory guide to LWIN.

No. The detailed information in LWIN helps to accurately identify, describe and differentiate between wines in a standardised way.  

LWIN does not contain some of the extra information that a system might need to track & process stock (e.g. tax status). This kind of information is often setup in a specific way due to how the customer operates, their underlying system, or territory they are based in. 

LWIN should always be added as a further property of a product code, enabling connectivity without disrupting existing process.  

LWINs are unique 7, 11, 16 or 18-digit codes. The 7-digit code refers to the wine itself (i.e. the producer and brand, grape or vineyard). The longer codes include information about the vintage, bottle and pack size.  

• LWIN-7: 1234567 – Winery name, Cabernet  
• LWIN-11: 12345672012 – Winery name, Cabernet, 2012  
• LWIN-16: 1234567201200750 – Winery name, Cabernet, 2012, 750ml bottle size*  
• LWIN-18: 123456720121200750 – Winery name, Cabernet, 2012, 12 bottles of 750ml  

*All bottle sizes are expressed in milliliters in a five-digit format. 

The quickest and easiest way to match your list with LWINs is by using Wine Matcher, an online tool developed by Liv-ex. 

We offer free one-month access to a limited version of Wine Matcher for any business wanting to get started with LWIN. You can upload an Excel list of wines, and Wine Matcher will automatically clean it, standardise it, and add LWINs. A one-month pass provides time to use it for adding LWIN to your list. You can request access here. 

The full version of Wine Matcher can also add extensive price information to Excel lists of wines. It’s part of the Liv-ex membership offering. You can find out more about it here. 

We’d be happy to help. Please contact our team to request an LWIN for your wine. 

LWIN is free and always will be. It has a Creative Commons license, which commits Liv-ex to keeping it free forever.

Monthly membership is available from £375 per month. Commission on sales/purchases is set at 2-3% depending on your package level. Find out more here. 

Liv-ex handles all payment, and all wine traded on Liv-ex travels through our warehouse or hubs. Our settlement fee covers this service, as well as three months of storage and insurance. Additional collections and delivery services are available. A full breakdown of settlement fees is available here. 

We invest heavily in our processes and systems to ensure all trade on Liv-ex is conducted as safely and efficiently as possible. Our experienced and skilled warehouse teams are a fundamental part of this operation, not least because they carefully open, inspect, photograph and check more than 65,000 cases of wine a year. 

Liv-ex trading contracts also ensure transparency about the condition and tax status of the wine you are buying. 

Liv-ex contracts standardise trading on the market, ensuring that you know exactly what to expect when your case arrives. These are SIB (Standard in Bond), SEP (Standard En Primeur), and Special. You can find definitions of these here.

Wines under the SIB (Standard in Bond) contract have no condition issues, are held in bond and are delivered to Liv-ex within two weeks of the trade taking place. You can further details here.

“Special – Now” indicates that a wine is immediately available in the Liv-ex warehouse.  

Click here for further information.

Yes, but you will need to request a selling limit based on a bank guarantee or insurance bond. This should be provided up front at your expense. Find out more here. 

As a trading member, you’ll receive regular alerts of interesting trading opportunities and have access to our team of brokers to help you find, buy and sell the wine that you’re looking for. 

You can also view your stock list on Liv-ex to benchmark against the market, find the best selling opportunities and easily sell your wine.  

Members on the Silver package and above can use Wine Matcher to find buying opportunities on other lists easily.  

Liv-ex is not registered to provide investment advice.  

Yes. Liv-ex has members in over 40 countries who buy and sell on the marketplace. Our logistics network has been designed to support this. We make weekly deliveries to Hong Kong, and to Beaune in France for easy shipment to the US. A weekly collection service also operates in California. 

All payments are to and from Liv-ex. When you sell, we pay you efficiently after the stock has been checked and invoiced. This makes it simple to buy and sell with the global fine wine market. 

Yes, but a company with an importer license will need to bring wine into the US on your behalf. Our US specialists are available to answer questions that you have on this in more detail. Feel free to request a call with them.   

A market maker is a company or an individual that places both an offer to sell and a bid to buy, and earns margin from the spread – the difference between the bid and the offer. The Liv-ex platform offers its members the infrastructure (data, trading and settlement) to make wine markets in a low cost, low risk environment. Find out more.

You can deliver wine that you’ve sold to one of our three warehouses, which are located in Tilbury (UK), Bordeaux, and Belgium.

Booking requirements – all warehouses

All deliveries must be pre-arranged and booked in.

To do this, you or your transporter must email [email protected] at least 48 hours in advance to organise an appointment.

Without an appointment, we reserve the right to refuse a delivery and charge may be incurred.

For booking in, the following minimum information is required:

1. Your desired delivery warehouse and the date and time of delivery
2. A detailed packing list that clearly states the wine names, the total amount of pallets and the total amount of cases to be delivered.
3. All associated Liv-ex transaction numbers
4. All required customs paperwork.

For warehouse details. click here.

Payments are made in line with the Liv-ex Settlement Calendar. You can find it here. 

This depends on the contract type, and other information given. 

• SIB purchases should be available at your default warehouse within 30 days of trade. 
• Special contract purchases should be available at your default warehouse 14 days after the delivery lead time. For example, if a trade is ‘Special – 6 weeks delivery, you should expect this in 8 weeks. 

Your Account Overview tab via Liv-ex and the Vine system will also give you real-time updates as to the status of your purchases. 

You can release your purchases via Vine, the logistics portal, which can be accessed by logging into Liv-ex and clicking on ‘Logistics’. 

To find out more about the various options available for releasing wine from Liv-ex warehouses, click here.

Liv-ex offers weekly temperature-controlled air freight to your desired address in Hong Kong. It is charged at a competitive per-case fee. Please enquire with your account manager.    

We operate monthly temperature-controlled deliveries to Beaune (France), which many of our clients find convenient for easy onward transportation to North America.  

All trades are settled by Liv-ex using our logistics network. We offer competitive flat rate fees depending on your location to cover logistics and administrative costs. 

Please see our logistics pricing guide page for more information 

The SIB Passport is a unique electronic certificate issued by Liv-ex to show that a case of wine is SIB compliant. Once issued, an SIB Passport is valid for three years while the wine remains in our warehouses. The passport enables faster processing when wine is bought or sold on Liv-ex. 

If a case of wine with a valid SIB Passport is sold on Liv-ex, the admin fee for creating the Passport is refunded. Any SIB Passport requested prior to arrival, via pre-advice, will receive three months’ free storage and is exempt from handling fees. 

To find out more, click here.

Yes. The safety of your wines is of the utmost importance to Liv-ex. Our state-of-the-art security and climate control systems ensure your wines are protected around the clock.  

Our warehouses have comprehensive security features such as alarms, CCTV, or periodic security patrols. Access to our storage areas is strictly controlled, with only authorized personnel having clearance. You can be confident that your wine is being handled by trained specialists.  

Maintaining the quality of your goods is just as important to us as securing them. Our facilities have 24-hour climate control. The temperature is maintained at around 16 degrees Celsius, and humidity is maintained between around 60% and 69%. Our facilities are also free from vibrations and daylight.  

Each case is given a unique identification number that will remain with it on its journey through our network. For extra peace of mind, you may request an SIB passport or photographs of your wine. Details of the SIB passport can be found here and pricing can be found here. Further, you may opt into stock take services, the tariffs for which can be found here.   

Finally, comprehensive insurance cover is available whilst your wines are stored with us, the details of which are available here.  

Automation describes a series of business processes that can be handled automatically using technology called APIs. APIs (or Application Programming Interfaces) are technical tools that exchange information between systems.

They allow you to bring information from Liv-ex into your internal systems or onto your website, and allow you to send information and instructions to Liv-ex. 

Using this technology, you can automate processes from price discovery, through trading, payment and logistics. Our handy guide ‘How to digitally transform your wine business’ explains the opportunities available and the benefits it can unlock. 

APIs (or Application Programming Interfaces) are technical tools that exchange information between systems. They allow you to bring information from Liv-ex into your internal systems or onto your website, and allow you to send information and instructions to Liv-ex. 

Almost every interaction that you might have with Liv-ex can be automated and brought inside your own system. This includes wine data, LWIN, buying, selling, accounts, and logistics. 

You can find a full outline of the opportunities available in our guide on digital transformation. 

If you are a software developer, you’ll find helpful resources on our developer page. 

The best place to start is to have a conversation with our team. We will be able to understand how automation can help you and your business, and begin to point you in the right direction. You are welcome to request a call with one of our automation experts using this form. Alternatively, speak to your Account Manager. 

On a technical level, start to familiarise yourself with LWIN (Liv-ex Wine Identification Number). These seven or 11-digit numbers are essential to making automation work in your system. You can find out more about LWIN here. 

Most ERPs and other software used by wine merchants can be adapted to work with APIs. Several also have off-the-shelf integrations available. You can find information on our website. 

The Liv-ex Automation team has worked with developers around the world, who have helped merchants to get started with Liv-ex automation. 

We are happy to connect you with developers in our network, who are already familiar with Liv-ex tech, and can help to get you started. Feel free to contact us using this short form. 

You can find information for developers on our website. We also suggest subscribing to our developer newsletter for updates and information. 

Our digital guide to automation explains how Liv-ex APIs can support wine businesses. 

You are also welcome to contact our team to express your interest and find out more. 

The latest API documentation and details of other resources for developers are available here.

Liv-ex offers a growing number of APIs. Occasionally, we need to retire legacy APIs to make room for innovation. To avoid any significant disruption, a deprecation policy is in place for services due to be retired.  

Currently, no APIs are due to be retired. 

The performance of Liv-ex’s websites and applications can be monitored online via our uptime report page. 

Yes. It is available for developers to use. Contact us to request access. 

A Liv-ex tool which lets wine businesses store, manage and get relevant data for multiple wine lists – all in one place. Use it to get client valuations within minutes, create ‘watch lists’ to monitor wines of interest or benchmark your wines against the market and other merchants, quickly spot opportunities. Available to Liv-ex members on all packages.  
 
Read more.

Please send your stock list to [email protected]. Our data team will match the list to LWIN – the unique product identifier and the common language for the wine industry – and upload the list on your behalf.

You can either build a list from scratch, save a search or upload a list via Wine Matcher. 
Please see tutorial video here

Within your list, select the relevant data in the data menu. Instants later, your list is transformed with this data. In one click, you can export all or relevant lines (by using filters) and analyse the list further in Excel using formulas. 

Yes. If you upload custom list to List Studio via Wine Matcher, we save all your input/original data. You will be able to access ‘Your Data’ in the data menu, and can select which you want to see alongside the Liv-ex data. 

We save only unique LWIN18s on the list. If there were any duplicates, we remove them.  

Wine Matcher is our online tool that cleans, standardises and adds prices to wine lists – whether it’s your own stock list or your clients’ lists that need valuation. With it, you can spend less time in spreadsheets, and instead quickly find the best buying-and selling opportunities.

The data should be in Excel (XLSX, CSV, etc.) Wine Matcher can’t work with Word documents or PDFs. For help formatting your wine list, click here.

Access to Wine Matcher is included in the Liv-ex Silver packages and above. If you’re a Bronze member already, it’s just £80 extra per month, which you’ll quickly make back in time saved and new opportunities spotted. Plus, the Silver packages and above comes with additional benefits such as monthly market reports, more data look-ups and price charts.

Yes. If you’re a wine business, we offer a one-week free trial of Wine Matcher. You can request it here. You can also request a demo of Wine Matcher, where we can show you the tool working in real-time, with an Excel-formatted wine list of your choice.

You can also watch a 30-minute webinar replay, where we show you how to use Wine Matcher to find buying opportunities on lengthy wine lists.