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Wine investment: Dom Pérignon 2015 vintage released
Can the new release of one of Champagne's most iconic cuvées buck recent market trends? Meanwhile, a cache of vintage Ports fetches record prices, and provenance wields huge price power with blue-chip wines.
Dom Pérignon 2015 has been one of the latest major releases on a fine wine market that has largely continued to see prices under pressure. Dom Pérignon has been a major star of Champagne’s greater presence on the secondary market in recent years, and the new launch follows the release of the 2013 vintage in early 2023.
UK merchants offered Dom Pérignon 2015 for between £848 and £875 per six-bottle case in bond (ib). That’s below the release price of Dom Pérignon 2013, according to Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, but it also said the 2013 vintage had fallen about 15% in price in the past 12 months.
On Bordeaux Index’s LiveTrade online trading platform, Dom Pérignon 2012 and 2013 were offered below £800 per six-bottle case. Liv-ex data suggested secondary market prices in general remained under pressure. The headline Liv-ex 1000 index fell 6.3% in value in six months to 30 June, and its Champagne 50 sub-index dropped 6.6%.
‘It’s a sign of the times that Dom Pérignon doesn’t sell out immediately,’ said Alex Turnbull, head of private and online sales at UK-based merchant Jeroboams. ‘We have seen stable demand [for the 2015 vintage], but go back three years and Dom Pérignon sold out within the hour.’
Turnbull also said that Dom Pérignon owner LVMH (Moët Hennessy) has ‘steadily increased the release price over the years, and so it doesn’t offer the same value on release that it used to’.
Vintage Ports command record prices at auction
Legendary vintage Ports from a UK private collection have generated strong buyer interest at a Christie’s auction in London.
Christie’s recently reported new auction price records (measured in terms of price per single bottle) for several vintage Ports in the sale. These included high-quality bottlings such as Dow’s 1924, of which a two-bottle lot sold for £6,875 including buyer’s premium (high estimate: £1,200), and Fonseca 1934. Two six-bottle lots of the Fonseca 1934 each fetched £9,375 (high estimate: £4,500 per lot).
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The Ports were from Raby castle cellars in County Durham, near Darlington. ‘The exceptional cellar conditions, cool and damp, have ensured that all vintage Port bottles in this collection are in perfect condition,’ said Edwin Vos, senior director and international head of Christie’s wine and spirits department, and Noah May, Christie’s head of wine and spirits for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Provenance pulls in the bids
Auction house Sotheby’s has recently reported strong bidding on certain blue-chip Burgundy wines, but the wider market picture for the region remains mixed.
Sotheby’s said more than a third of lots sold in its Burgundy-focused ‘Live in the Vines’ auction in Beaune, in the heart of the Côte d’Or, on 2 July achieved prices comfortably above pre-sale high estimates.
Asia-based bidders were particularly prominent in the sale, which was part of the Epicurean’s Atlas series of auctions featuring wines from noted collector Pierre Chen. Sotheby’s also reported new record auction prices on certain wines (see wines, below).
For example, it said a three-bottle lot of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC), Montrachet 2007 sold for the equivalent of more than €15,800 per bottle, including buyer’s premium – about 50% above the previous record bottle price.
George Lacey, Sotheby’s head of wine Asia, told Decanter: ‘When you offer older vintages in good condition with exceptional provenance – which are rare and not so frequently seen in the market – there’s clearly still great demand. That was really encouraging for us to see. People were really competing for those wines.’
Nick Pegna, Sotheby’s global head of wines & spirits, cautioned that the group’s focus on older wines that are ready to drink means that its results are not necessarily representative of the market in its entirety.
Lacey added: ‘People are willing to spend money on great wines. But, they are perhaps looking to replenish cellars or to buy wines that they can get immediate enjoyment from.’ In general terms, Lacey said Burgundy prices were ‘no longer sliding’, but were down versus their peak two years ago.
UK-based merchant Bordeaux Index said top-tier Burgundy prices were down by about 10% in the first half of 2024, albeit the price drift has slowed in recent months. It added that prices were still around 150% higher than a decade ago, on average.
Bordeaux Index pointed out that trading has improved this year on ‘bellwether’ producers DRC and Armand Rousseau, too. Burgundy wines now feature on the group’s recently relaunched LiveTrade online trading platform.
Data released by Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, showed that its index for DRC wines rose slightly in value earlier this year, before dipping again in June.
Sotheby’s Live in the Vines: six blue-chip Burgundy highlights
Six examples of Burgundy lots in the Sotheby’s Live in the Vines sale on 2 July that saw a record auction price for that specific wine (records were measured in terms of price per 75cl, except for Lot 130, which is a record price per magnum of this wine):
LOT 200 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru 1990 12x75cl. Sold for €100,000 – Estimate: €40,000-€60,000
LOT 202 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Chambertin Grand Cru 2009 12x75cl. Sold for €68,750 – Estimate: €40,000-€55,000
LOT 4 Domaine Leroy, Chambertin Grand Cru 2011 3x75cl. Sold for €50,000 – Estimate: €26,000-€38,000
LOT 140 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Montrachet Grand Cru 2007 3x75cl. Sold for €47,500 – Estimate: €19,000-€24,000
LOT 130 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, La Tâche Grand Cru 2005 1x150cl. Sold for €35,000 | Estimate: €16,000-€20,000
LOT 1 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Echezeaux Grand Cru 2005 3x75cl. Sold for €30,000 – Estimate: €6,500-€9,500
Data Source: Sotheby’s. ‘Sold for’ prices include buyer’s premium.
The Bordeaux Index view
Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com.
The net performance of top wines from Burgundy since 2021 remains very positive, with gains of 60% or more across 2022, especially, now having settled into more of a context of above-40% after the market having softened across H2 2023 and in 2024.
This can be summarised succinctly as a very skewed supply-demand imbalance being replaced by a much more balanced position – naturally this has seen the highest degree of correction among those blue-chip names which had particularly outperformed, but the picture overall is that most owners of top Burgundy have seen substantial gains in value in their collection.
At Bordeaux Index we have seen prices largely stabilise (albeit some auction performance is notably lacklustre) and we expect price growth to resume over the medium term; but the timing for this is unclear, given the discretionary nature of buying demand.
Our observations relate very much to blue-chip Burgundy, though – the top 20-25 names – as we see the segment(s) below, high-quality wines though they are, as being overpriced and without a firm buyer base for consumption of the wines.
Chris Mercer is a Bristol-based freelance editor and journalist who spent nearly four years as digital editor of Decanter.com, having previously been Decanter’s news editor across online and print.
He has written about, and reported on, the wine and food sectors for more than 10 years for both consumer and trade media.
Chris first became interested in the wine world while living in Languedoc-Roussillon after completing a journalism Masters in the UK. These days, his love of wine commonly tests his budgeting skills.
Beyond wine, Chris also has an MSc in food policy and has a particular interest in sustainability issues. He has also been a food judge at the UK’s Great Taste Awards.
