Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

As promised, please see below for a quick update, a filling of the gaps since my last blog posts. A lot has happened...

The 2009 campaign revisited. Whilst the campaign itself was manic, the period immediately after was somewhat lacklustre. As expected. After the hyped up initial demand was satisfied and the summer recess kicked in, prices came down slightly. Please also see the Liv-ex blog for more information. Some wines however (Montrose, Pontet Canet, Poyferre, Lynch Bages, Pavillon Rouge, Forts de Latour to name a few) continued to see strong demand and the Lafite and Latour have been heavily traded again since the HK Lafite auction.

Prices and demand in general. Demand continues to be very strong. In addition to Asia, there is a massive uptake from European investors. Asian demand has been stable but it is remarkable how much (UK) investment money is flowing into the wine market. Consequently, prices are firming. See here for a chart. The First Growths and their second labels lead the way, but in their wake there a quite a few other wines appreciating rapidly as well.

Lafite 2008... Lafite have released the news they will emboss the Chinese symbol for 8, which stands for eternal blessings and good luck on the 2008 bottles. It looks stunning.

And sure enough, it provoked a frenzied run on the vintage. All merchants sold out in no time at the then price of around 9,000. Now, 1 week later, you will struggle to find it for less than 14,000 and the market seems to think it will hit 20,000 by the time it will become physically available (early 2011).

And therefore Mouton 2008, again. Mouton was the first to enjoy the rumour of the 2008 label being special i.e. designed by a Chinese artist. This news came out what must have been about a year ago and the price of Mouton 2008 went up. Then, people probably forgot about it as the price remained relatively stable. After what happened to Lafite 2008 though, Mouton 2008 is now red hot. In 2 days time, the price went up from 4,250 to 5,750 with hardly anybody offering.

HK Lafite auction. Just over a week ago, Sotheby’s has auctioned a large selection of Lafite wine, direct from the cellars of Lafite. The result was astonishing. Prices fetched were over twice the (then) market value. See the Decanter website for more info. Truly remarkable. And whilst HK auction prices are generally met with sceptiscism, this time around they caused a run on Lafite and prices – once more – surged. On a personal note, I can sort of understand why ex-chateau 1869 bottles fetch outrageous prices, because of the provenance. However, the 2009 vintage going for 43,000 pounds – over 3 times market value – is insane. After all, if I offer the 2009, it’s ex-chateau as well, isn’t it? Yet, it is the 2008 and 2009 that have seen most demand post auction. Some say though we Westerners should stop judging Chinese behaviour with our own values. The world works differently in China, according to Decanter again. Quite.