TOP 10 INVESTMENT WINES OF THE DECADE
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Top 10 Investment Wines of the Decade
Top 10 Investment Wines of the Decade
Over the past decade, the wine market has seen some seismic changes. At the beginning of this period, Bordeaux still dominated the market and was the darling of the Far East, with brands such as Lafite and Petrus experiencing insatiable demand and price rises to match. Since then, with prices on the rise for Bordeaux, discerning wine buyers started to look elsewhere, turning the spotlight on the other great winemaking regions which had for the previous decade been overshadowed by Bordeaux’s dominance. The main protagonist in this decade’s story has been Burgundy – to such a large extent that if the top 10 wines had no selection criteria, the list would have been made up entirely by Burgundies. In fact, Domaine de la Romanée Conti, could have contributed their whole stable of wines. In the last few years of the decade, as prices of Burgundy have similarly spiralled out of control reaching new stratospheric heights, attention from buyers has again turned to other regions which produce equally alluring wines but at a fraction of the price (comparatively!) with regions such as Piedmont, the Rhone Valley, Champagne and Tuscany – all experiencing increasing demand and rising prices for the most sought after wines.
In order to compile a list of interest, breadth and variety we decided to implement some selection criteria. Firstly, we decided that each of the major investment grade wine regions should be covered in the list – so we have at least one entry from the US, Italy, Champagne, Rhone, Bordeaux and Burgundy. We also decided that each producer could only have one entry to the list. So single entry spots for DRC, Leroy and Rousseau who could have proffered many more to the top 10. We also wanted to choose wines which would have been accessible to buyers in December 2009, and had enough reliable price data throughout the decade, to ensure its performance was consistent and not a complete anomaly resulting from inaccessibility and rarity. We feel this has provided a much more interesting cross-section of wines that have all performed exceptionally well whilst maintaining a level of attainability – so well in fact, for a bit of fun we’ve even compared their performance over the last 10 years against the world’s leading stock market index – the S&P 500. Over that period the ten wines in question have increased in value on average 357% whereas the S&P has had an absolute return of just 186%.
Back at the start of this decade if a savvy wine investor had purchased one bottle of each of the wines in our top 10, they would have made a cool $45,000 profit on just a $12,500 outlay! A great reason to raise a toast to the past decade whilst looking forward, wondering which wines will make the top 10 next time.
Index Period End 2009 End 2019 10 Year Perf %
S&P 500 10 Year $1,115.10 $3,192.52 186%
Top 10 Investment Wines 10 Year $12,527.00 $57,298.00 357%