Fine wine investment is bouncing back

by Leon Gettler

After stabilising in 2015 following massive falls in prices, the fine wine industry could be entering a good 2016.

The Liv-Ex Fine Wine 100 Index was flat in 2015, after five years of decline, outperforming the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100.

Now auction houses are expecting good prices.

Sotheby’s has told Bloomberg that six bottles of 1982 Petrus from the Pomerol region of Bordeaux may fetch as much as £15,000 ($A30,595) or more than $A5099 a bottle.

Ten bottles of Chateau Latour from the same year will be selling for an upper estimate of £10,000 while a 12-bottle case of Chateau Margaux ’86 will be going for £4200.

The Wine Investment Fund says that wine is now on the way back.

“While fine wine certainly has the potential to rise rapidly in value, it was its more defensive qualities which came to the fore in 2015,” it said in a report this month.

It says that wine as investment will play a greater role in world bond and equity markets with inflation concerns on the rise.

“Wine, as a physical asset whose value is not eroded by inflation, should benefit,” the report said.

26th January 2016