INVESTMENTS | 57
they have themselves walked into the legendary cellars and found paradise.” Lafite is still owned today by the Barons de
Rothschild, and has 107 hectares of vineyards. Over the past decade the Château has produced an average of 45,000 cases a year, including both the Château Lafite Rothschild flagship wine and its second wine, Carruades de Lafite. Château Lafite Rothschild is the
largest of Bordeaux’s first-growth wine estates, and it is currently outpacing rivals as prices rebound from the recent credit-crunch lows, driven by signs of economic recovery and accelerating demand from China. Even in recent years (recent in wine terms), outstanding vintages
from the last 10-15 years are accruing in value at an amazing rate. Take the three cases of Lafite Rothschild from the 2000 vintage that sold for HK$266,200 ($34,300) each at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. This is about three times the $11,749 for 12 bottles of the same wine sold at a New York auction at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008, just after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. If you needed verification of this dramatic
upward trend, a glance at the Liv-ex Fine Wine Index shows (per case) that Lafite Rothschild is the market’s major mover, with
a year 2000 vintage upping by 28.3 percent between September and October last year, from £8,300 to £10,660, while the 2009 vintage also moved up by 16.7 percent from £10,950 to £12,777.
THE LIV-EX FINE WINE 100 INDEX
This is the industry’s leading benchmark. It represents the price movement of 100 of the most sought-after fine
wines for which there is a strong secondary market and is calculated monthly. The majority of the index consists of Bordeaux wines—a reflection of the overall market—although wines from Burgundy, the Rhône, Champagne and
Italy are also included. The index is calculated using Liv-ex Mid Prices and is then weighted to account for original production levels and increasing scarcity as the wine
ages. As such, the index is designed to give each wine a weighting that corresponds with its impact on the overall market.
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