The recently released update on Liv-ex’s classification system says much about the state of the fine wine market – and provides some hints at where it might be heading. db gets the low-down from Robbie Stevens, Liv-ex’s senior broker and territory manager for the Americas. So what is the Liv-ex classification system? Broadly based on the 1855 First Growth classification system, it was established in 2009 to determine a hierarchy of the leading labels on the secondary market, with wine spread across five tiers determined by price. To avoid it being unfairly skewed by one stellar trade, a minimum level of activity and number of vintages traded over the last year are required for a wine to qualify and since 2020, older vintages are preventing from influencing the average trade price by restricting it to the last ten vintages. So what does the new classification tell us? Bull vs Bear One of the first things to notice is that the price band of each tiers has gone up by around 19%, reflecting the wider increase in prices across the fine wine market, in line with the Liv-ex 1000 – but the number of wines on it has gone down by around 53 labels. According to Robbie Stevens, Liv-ex’s senior broker and territory manager for the Americas, this reflects the slightly unusual place that the market is currently in – straddling the period between the seven-year bull market that started in 2016, and the switch that happened around October 2022,
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
