WineFi Weekly

Welcome to the ninth edition of WineFi Weekly👋
📅 May 20th 2024

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The Wine Syndicate

This week saw us onboard investors to our wine syndicate group. The Wine Syndicate allows you to co-invest in expertly-curated portfolios of fine wine, allowing you to gain exposure to the wine market at a fraction of the cost of owning the individual assets outright.

If you are interested in learning more, please sign up for early access at www.syndicate.wine

New Podcast Episode

In this latest episode of The Wine Investing Podcast, Lily Feng explains how Jera Wine allows wine owners (from individuals to hotels and wine merchants) to borrow against the value of their wine portfolios.

At WineFi, we’re super excited about Jera, because it represents a huge step towards legitimising wine as a bona fide asset class -- allowing investors to gain early liquidity.

Available wherever you get your podcasts. Click here to listen on Spotify.

En Primeur 2023 Reaction

We are starting to receive the first set of insights into market sentiment following the Bordeaux 2023 release.

This EP campaign has seen massive price drops, with prices on average down 21.5% compared to last year, with some producers going as far as a 40% decrease. It is important however to note that prices last year increased 20.8%, so this could be seen almost as a return to normality rather than an out and out slashing of prices.

The initial takeaways are that the trade hasn’t quite shaken off last year’s scepticism - many wines are already trading below release price. Anecdotally, we are hearing that négociant sentiment is that this year is ‘average to very slow’. More interest is coming from private collectors than merchants who would buy and then have to sit on the stock.

The release has not yet finished, and the price drop has been larger than the market expected, so perhaps there is still hope for this year. It seems like the Bordeaux producers still have much further to go to rebuild market faith in the En Primeur process.

The Standout Wine

The standout wine of the vintage could be from the Medoc’s 2023 Chateau Margaux.

James Suckling, Peter Moser, and Antonio Galloni have all rated this year’s Margaux as having the potential for 100/100 perfection. It was also rated as Liv-ex members wine of the vintage.

This release is yet to happen - so stay tuned for pricing insights.

The Wider Market

Despite April's brief sunshine, the May update brings a reminder of spring's rainy spells. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 benchmark dropped 1.3% in April, reversing a 0.4% gain in March. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50, tracking daily First Growth movements, also declined by 1.3%, more sharply than its 0.6% fall in March.

The Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000, which monitors 1,000 wines globally, fell 0.7%, consistent with its 0.6% drop in March. Among its sub-indices, only the Italy 100 saw a rise, gaining 0.7% and showing resilience with just a 0.2% decline year-to-date.

The Bordeaux Legends 40 remained unchanged, while the Bordeaux 500 saw a modest 0.6% fall. The Burgundy 150 and Rhône 100 experienced steeper drops of 1.3% and 1.0%, respectively.

Despite these declines, the market's sentiment isn't entirely gloomy. April saw increases in trade value, volume, and the number of traded labels and individual wines on Liv-ex. However, the outlook for the En Primeur campaign remains uncertain, with early signs not yet promising.