Lafite 2011 Price Extends Recovery as Yquem Sees Higher Demand

(Bloomberg) -- Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2011 was the most traded vintage on the Liv-ex wine market last week, changing hands at 4,600 pounds ($6,040) per 12-bottle case, as its price continued to recover from late-2015 lows, according to website data.

Other top-traded vintages included Chateau Haut-Brion 2016 at 4,500 pounds a case, Lafite 2012 at 4,000 pounds, Chateau Montrose 2010 at 2,045 pounds and Lafite 2009 at 7,350 pounds, the data on Liv-ex’s Insights web page showed.

Bordeaux accounted for an unusually high 82 percent of Liv-ex trade in the week to July 27, reflecting slower trading in wines from other regions, with Burgundy taking a further 11 percent, according to Liv-ex. The long-term trend still shows a drop in Bordeaux’s share of the Liv-ex market, however, to 67 percent of trading so far this year by value from 74 percent last year and as much as 96 percent in 2010, at the height of the boom in the demand from China.

“Burgundy has made the biggest gains so far this year,” Liv-ex said in its Insights report, noting that it was “comfortably maintaining its position as the second most traded region on the market.” Burgundy’s market share on Liv-ex has climbed to 14 percent this year.

Italy’s traded share of 6 percent has remained “relatively stable” this year so far, with Champagne also close to 6 percent and the Rhone at about 2 percent, according to Liv-ex.

While the focus in Bordeaux is generally on the red wines, buyer interest in the sweet whites from Chateau d’Yquem is showing signs of picking up. Some Yquem vintages from the 1990s have traded at record highs this month, according to Liv-ex, with the 1997 reaching 2,400 pounds a case, the 1996 vintage 2,230 pounds and the 1998 selling for 2,000 pounds.

To contact the reporter on this story: Guy Collins in London at guycollins@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Steve Geimann at sgeimann@bloomberg.net, Brian Wingfield