Marketwatch spotlight:
Champagne
Champagne’s recent fine wine market performance, backed by an exciting run of releases, has thrust the region further into the spotlight. A select band of vintage prestige cuvées at the very top end of the market have been firmly in the sights of savvy collectors.
UK merchant Goedhuis & Co said in its Q1
2021 fine wine market report that Champagne ‘has been on a quiet bull-run for the past five years’.
Attention has focused on releases from the lauded 2008 vintage, which has been described by some as a worthy successor to the vaunted 2002. But prestige cuvées from the class of 2012 have generated particular excitement, too.
There have been several market debuts at the top end of the market so far in 2021, including Louis Roederer Cristal 2013, Bollinger RD 2007 and Pol Roger’s Sir Winston Churchill 2012.
The Liv-ex Champagne 50 index outperformed all other regions in the year to 31 May, rising in value by 13.2%. It was up by 60% over five years.
Of the names tracked in the index, Dom Pérignon, Salon Le Mesnil and Taittinger Comtes de Champagne have shown particularly strong growth, according to Liv-ex. However, some market data suggests price momentum has been soft on younger Dom Pérignon vintages (see ‘The Bordeaux Index view’, right).
Taittinger’s Comtes has been interesting to track; the hotly anticipated 2008 vintage launched in October 2020 at a premium to market prices of the 2007 and 2006, as reported by analyst group Wine Lister at the time.
According to Goedhuis, the 2008 ‘immediately rose to trade at £700 [for 6x75cl in bond] from its initial release price of £535’. Interest in the release also helped to fuel demand for other available vintages of Comtes de Champagne, notably 2006 and 2004, Goedhuis said.
‘Clearly in 2008 they changed the price context and all the back vintages went up [too],’ said Matthew O’Connell, head of investment at Bordeaux Index, of the latest Comtes release.
O’Connell also highlighted Cristal and Bollinger as showing good momentum.
Both O’Connell and Goedhuis noted that there was a particularly strong relationship between price rises and diminishing supplies in prestige cuvée Champagne. O’Connell pointed to recent price gains on Krug 1998 and 2000 as a possible example of this.
However, even at the top level, Champagne doesn’t tend to generate the biggest returns in the fine wine market. O’Connell said prestige cuvée Champagne was generally a solid performer in investment terms, albeit more at the ‘lower risk, lower return’ end of the market.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course, and O’Connell also offered a note of caution on smallerproduction wines, including grower Champagne, due to lower liquidity – despite unquestionable drinking pleasure. ‘It has to be tradeable’ from an investment perspective, he said.
Miles Davis of Wine Owners exchange said Champagne investment was worth considering. ‘The best wines can age gracefully for a long, long time and the prices for top Champagnes (of both colours) from top producers and vintages only travel in one direction,’ he said in a June report.
He highlighted rosé Champagnes as a lesserexplored area of the market with value potential. ‘Vintage rosés are not produced as often as whites and are often more vinous or “gastronomique”.’
With the release of Krug 2008 still to come, plus the planned debut of Dom Pérignon 2012 this autumn, collectors have plenty to consider.