Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

Bloomberg reports today that "Richmond Park Capital LLP, the U.K. merchant bank founded by former Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein executives, bought 29 percent of Lunzer Wine Investments and will start a fund aimed at wealthy clients to invest in Bordeaux"

Interesting. With the title "Is the Bordeaux Wine Boom coming to an end?", we posted an entry in this blog on the 21 of February, voicing the view of some people in the industry that the Belle Epoque of Fine Wine Investment could be over. Apparently, Richmond Park Capital do not agree with this outlook. Former Dresdner Kleinwort Chief Executive Officer Andrew Pisker, Steven Berger – head of global merchant banking at Lehman Brothers in the 1990s - and finally Pascal Maeter, former co-head of global leverage for Dresdner Kleinwort are the gentlemen behind Richmond Park Capital, all heavy weights in banking and investment judging by their careers. Peter Lunzer himself has 20 years of experience in Wine Investments.

They might have it spectacularly wrong – which I suppose wouldn't surprise a lot of us when the word "banker" is involved. Just looking at the facts though, it is encouraging that a new wine fund is started. More importantly, it means a fresh 15 to 20 million pounds buying fine wine. If my estimates are correct, that represents some 5-8% of the combined yearly turnover of the UK fine wine trade, so big enough to have some impact on prices.