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Vinum Fine Wines Market Report August 2025
I’m going to keep this brief. It is August, it’s boiling hot outside, most people are away (if they have any sense) and the market continues to drift. It is quiet. There is very little actual news around within wine although it now looks likely Trump’s tariffs on Europe will be 15%, although the EU is still negotiating hard to have wines and spirits exempted. Trump and the US seem to enjoy negotiations so anything may yet happen, who knows.
Here are the major Liv-ex indices for July:
A full exemption on tariffs would be a significant boon to the wider wine market. From the US perspective (buyers) this would be good news whilst 10% is probably digestible, especially if increased costs are shared out along the supply chain.
From the European perspective, and particularly the Bordelais, it would massive news. I have just read the impact on France alone could be more than a billion dollars of lost revenue and perhaps affect more than half a million jobs. Another source quotes $370 million (lost revenue) for Italy. Whether accurate or not, these figures are sobering.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that since January, when Trump decided to go to war on trade, the US$ has fallen c.13% against the Euro, so any activity at all from across the pond in this environment could be considered a bonus.
Within the US, auction results have been firm and indices following these wines (untroubled by any new taxes) have been on the rise, according to Wine Market Journal (although they don’t seem to publish any corresponding data!). They have seen appreciating prices in red Bordeaux, Port (!!), Champagne and white Burgundy, while red Burgundy and (red) Rhone have been in decline.
Liv-ex reported last week’s US activity to be c.15% of turnover, up from mid-single digits in previous weeks, which is quite a jump – maybe they know something we don’t and tariffs are to be relaxed on wine, again who knows?
Here are the regional indices from Liv-ex:
As you can see, all these indices were down in July except Italy, posting a gain of +0.6%. Leading performers come from wines made by Bruno Giacosa, Roberto Conterno, Sassicaia and Soldera – so no great surprises there.
What is surprising is the data. The wine market is still very inefficient as there are thousands of trading venues around the world; every merchant, broker, negociant, exchange or ‘platform’ can be described a venue (after all, all you need is a willing buyer and a willing seller to strike a trade and make a venue).
Was Sassicaia ’15 really up 38% last month? I don’t think so. Liv-ex are easily the best data provider in the market, thanks to their scope, but they do not have data access to every data point and traded price out there. And all cases of wine are not the same owing to condition and provenance etc. Also, they follow their own strict guidelines as to how these prices are calculated to maintain consistency, even if this throws up inconsistencies like this.
Obviously, there is more discussion and general hubbub regarding data in all businesses, for very good reason. Unfortunately, in the wine market, data is still poor.
This problem happens in all decentralised markets, FX for example, and is not likely to go away anytime soon.
The message here is simple; be careful when thinking about wine data. It’s an opaque market and a lot of it is meaningless – average market price being the best example.
To finish on a more light hearted note, I posted this article on LinkedIn recently (you may have missed it) – it has had plenty of nice feedback.
It starts like this:
“One of the internal chat groups at Vinum Fine Wines goes by the name of ‘The Wines We Drink’.
There may be a slight misconception that employees of a fine wine trading house such as Vinum are normally found to be sipping Salon, mainlining Mouton or larging it up on Leroy. This is not exactly the case. Sure, we get to taste a decent amount of the good stuff, but as for drinking this calibre of wine on a regular basis, forget about it – hence the title of the group.”
Keep on drinking!
Miles Davis, 13th August 2025
