One asset resists market changes despite the financial and cryptocurrency market sink. It is collectible wine, capable in the first quarter of 2022 of returning even positive performance. What return can you expect from investing in fine wine? What are the best performing collectible wines? These questions have been answered by Liv-ex, the leading marketplace for buying fine wines and a leader in developing performance indices
Performance of collectible wine
During the quarter, Liv-ex’s leading indices, the Fine Wine 50, Fine Wine 100, and Fine Wine 1000, rose 2.3 percent, 2.9 percent, and 7.3 percent, respectively. Respectable performance considering that bonds, equities, and most traditional asset classes, complicit with war, inflation, and recession fears, closed the year’s first three months in deep red. However, the first quarter’s results are nothing new, confirming a trend for several years. In 2021 the Liv-ex Fine Wine index returned 19.94 percent, outperforming the FTSE 100, Dow Jones, and gold, which stopped at 8.3 percent, 14.4 percent, and -6.37 percent, respectively. Even on a longer-term time horizon, fine wines are an excellent investment. According to Knight Frank’s latest report, wine’s average return over ten years is 120%.
The best regions of 2021
Looking at wine regions and the latest price trends, 2021 was the year of Champagne. Among the Liv-ex 1000 sub-indices, the weakest was the Bordeaux 500. The index was up 9.2 percent year-to-date, while the Champagne 50 was the best performer, up 33.7 percent. Burgundy scored 27.1 percent because of the region’s top labels. Several vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti reached new all-time highs, and Armand Rousseau and Domaine Leflaive were among the year’s best labels. Italian fine wines also made their mark, with Piedmontese and Tuscan wines growing by an average of 15 percent during the year
What were the top-performing investment wines?
Finally, regarding individual bottles, in 2021, the top performer was the 2002 Salon: the price of a case of 12 bottles rose from £5.5 thousand to £10 thousand, for a performance of 80%. In second place was Domaine Armand Rousseau’s 2012 Chambertin Grand Cru (+73.7%), followed by Domaine Georges Roumier’s 2013 Bonnes Mares Grand Cru (+69.1%). The top five are Domaine Leflaive’s 2013 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru (+66.6%) and Jean Lous Chave’s 2008 Hermitage (+66.3%).
