Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

Up until the Chinese New Year – which started on February 14th - this year has been a rollercoaster. Massive demand, prices increasing rapidly across the board and hardly time to follow up. Apart from Asia, the UK wine investment companies were particularly active, buying the usual suspects but also taking position on seemingly undervalued First Growths and/or vintages. After the 14th though, there was a 10 day lull which, at the end made you think that the market had finally decided that enough was enough.

Not so. Buyers are back with a vengeance. Price increases, if anything, are accelerating. Particularly for Lafite and as ever, Carruades de Lafite. It seems potty and out of control – Lafite 2000 for example now trading at a whopping 16,000 pounds where it was close to 13,000 only 2 months ago. But cases get snapped up as soon as they’re offered. Interestingly, demand and prices for the other First Growths are also on the up. It becomes more and more apparent that – as demand continues to outstrip supply - stock is becoming increasingly difficult to find. And you know what that means... bad news for people who actually like to drink their wine...

In the meantime, the focus is slowly shifting towards Bordeaux, for the 2009 vintage. At the end of this month, the winetrade will descend on Bordeaux to taste the barrel samples and to try and wrestle allocations out of the Negociants. I don’t expect any fireworks until the end of May though, quite likely even the beginning of June – the Chateaux won’t repeat last year's mistake of releasing pre-Parker. Even so, April and May will be filled with speculation, dealmaking and even sales. That’s right, sales. The 2009 is already being sold, as we speak, which to my knowledge is a novelty.

Nevertheless, the window from now until the end of May is an interesting one. With demand from Asia slightly easing off after their New Year frenzy and the En Primeur activity not yet fully started, this might be a good time to pick up your favourites at a decent price. Sorry, that should read slightly less outrageous price. Merchants are likely to value cash over profit in order to build a warchest for the upcoming primeur campaign. So do the Negociants in Bordeaux for whom it’s imperative to have enough cash to buy into the new vintage. Private stockholders might want to cash in the profit on their existing cases in order to take advantage of a new (and very exciting) investment opportunity. Don’t expect prices to fall though – it’s just not that kind of market right now – but they might be relatively stable and therefore negotiable.

On a different note, you might have noticed that we have included a small selection of "super Italians" to our list. Personally, I have always been fascinated by the top Italians from especially Barolo and Tuscany. They are magnificent wines. Demand for them was always confined to connoisseurs and for some obscure reason, the USA. Recently though, there has been increasing interest from other places, causing Sassicaia, Ornellaia and the top Barolo's to take off.

Finally, do not hesitate to get in touch with us. Be it to pick our brain on the wine market, to discuss en primeur buying strategies or to source your favourite wine to drink - we are very happy to help and share our views.