Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

Last Saturday, Christie’s held its first Hong Kong wine auction since 2001. After a series of disappointing results in recent auctions by other houses, it’s good to see that demand is still there. Christie’s fetched US $ 4m on a pre-sale estimate of US $ 3.2m with 94% of lots sold. That is a very encouraging result, no doubt helped by some very rare vintages of Latour, ex cellar, bought by Francois Pinault in 1993.

This news comes after Liv-ex released its November results, which saw the Liv-ex 100 decline by 5.5% compared to October. Year on year the index is down by 12.6%. To put this in perspective, the FTSE 100 is down by 34.9% year on year and the Nikkei even by 48.8%. 

This shows prices are still falling but there are signs that the decline is slowing down. Indeed, after 2 quiet weeks towards the end of November, volume of trade is very high again with several buyers that were sitting on their hands now snapping up trophy wines at what surely are bargain prices when you’re in it for the long run.

Happy hunting!