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The title of a sentimental song by Craig David and Sting triggers pleasant feelings in music lovers. For wine lovers, rather unease. Wine prices have fluctuated greatly in the last three years and have fallen extremely for many cult wines. In advance: at the end of 2014, things should be looking up again!

Joy for investors

The prices of "normal" drinking wines have been seriously stable for many years. What are normal drinking wines? Wines that are not assigned to any particular price category, are nevertheless inexpensive and are usually drunk in the first five years after bottling. Wines that can often provide unexpected pleasure, as expectations are very low with many supermarket wines under ten euros. With a cult wine, however, one always expects a special experience. Cult wines are wines with a long tradition, constant top quality, low availability and - associated with that - high price. They are usually names that everyone who comes into contact with wine has already heard. No matter whether it is a Sassicaia from Tuscany or a Mouton-Rothschild from Bordeaux. These cult wines are not infrequently bought less as a beverage, but increasingly since the beginning of this millennium as an investment. In the last decade, this kind of speculation has been extremely successful. Books on "liquid assets" were published in series, especially in the USA. In Europe, too, investors and oligarchs from Russia and China bought the best and most expensive cult wines in unimaginable quantities. Demand far exceeded supply and prices reached unimagined heights.

Joy among wine investors. Sorrow for the wine connoisseurs.

Author Werner Feldner during his tasting of 20 wines with 100/100 Parker points. In the long run, such wines are a super investment. (Photo: W. Feldner)

Pleasure for connoisseurs

As the table below proves, however, this trend has changed in recent years, which is also confirmed by the Liv-ex 100 (the most important price index for cult wines for wine and the wine trade). One simply has to look at it realistically today, even if the topic of wine investment continues to make for overly optimistic headlines in various magazines. The fact is: big business once was and perhaps will be again in the future. At present, facts such as the Liv-ex 100, which is shrinking month by month and currently (May 2014) stands at 246.58, speak a different language. We already had almost the same value in August 2007(!), and compared to the highest value of 364.89 in June 2011, this is still a loss of almost one third.

Great sorrow for all those who wanted to earn a good return with wine. Great joy for the connoisseurs of the noble beverages.

Wine is meant for us humans as a means of enjoyment. The exorbitant price increases of recent years were a product of profit-seeking and prestige thinking. Only a few of the wines bought in the three- to four-digit euro range were actually drunk. If you consider that a Lafite-Rothschild 2000 was available by subscription for a "measly" 216.67 euros, this wine cost around 2,277 euros in specialist shops on 28 February 2011 and is on the market today for an average of 1,650 euros. For 250 euros still a pleasure, for 1,700 euros a questionable one; as far as the price-performance ratio is concerned, because taste is always subjective, as we know.

The downward spiral is even more drastic in price comparisons of cult wines - auctioned on Ebay. The WPI (Wine Price Index) of winecollect.eu* has been listing the prices of these auctions since 2003. At the time, Wein-Plus was the first wine network in Europe to make this data available to its subscribers free of charge. I have selected a few examples of the current price decline from this database. It is also known among wine connoisseurs that especially the 2005 vintage, which was "overheated" in terms of price, has fallen sharply in recent years, which is also reflected in the table.

Wine / Producer Vintage Maximum price WPI (€) Date Maximum price Price current WPI (€) Difference
Château Carruades de Lafite 1999 291,00 23.01.2011 92,00 - 68,38%
Château Lafite Rothschild 2000 1.825,00 06.02.2011 827,00 - 54,68%
Château Cheval Blanc 2005 925,00 20.02.2011 422,00 - 54,34%
Château Ausone 2003 1.318,00 18.02.2011 640,00 - 51,44%
Château Lafite Rothschild 2008 1.145,00 29.05.2011 572,00 - 50,04%
Château Carruades de Lafite 2000 312,00 23.02.2011 158,00 - 49,35%
DRC - La Tâche 2005 3.400,00 15.05.2008 1.843,00 - 45,79%
Château Latour 2005 1.011,00 27.04.2008 615,00 - 39,16%
Château d'Yquem 2003 242,00 09.12.2011 175,00 - 27,68%
Château Pétrus 2005 4.005,00 15.04.2008 3.025,20 - 24,46%

Burgundy in China

Since the Chinese have (temporarily?) turned their backs on Bordeaux for various reasons, another French wine-growing region has become more popular than ever: Burgundy! The who's who of Burgundy is not only sought after by wine enthusiasts and connoisseurs, but also as a store of value. This is not new, but with falling wine prices, it is an exception. Even the great younger vintages that are not yet ready to drink are sold out almost everywhere immediately, and prices are rising. One of the reasons for this is the smaller quantity of these noble drops. 200,000 bottles of a Bordeaux Premier Crus are usually compared to only 10,000 to 20,000 bottles of a Grand Crus. Whether Armand Rousseau, Coche Dury or even Romane-Conti, Burgundy is currently a safe bank. Safe bank? Even safer on the palate!

Wine as an investment: 1982 is still one of the most lucrative vintages. As an investment, buy only in original wooden boxes (OHKs)! (Photo: W. Feldner)

* Username: Wein-Plus.eu; Password: abo2014

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