The fine wine recovery is a very short list

The indices say fine wine has turned the corner. The trading data say something narrower: buyers are back, but only for wines they already know.

After two difficult years, fine wine has been talked up as a market on the mend. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100, the trade's main index, was up 4.35 per cent in the twelve months to September. That is real, but it is modest. And the index hides how few wines are doing the work.

Where the money went

Liv-ex's latest market update, published on 2 November, shows Bordeaux taking 41 per cent of all traded value. Burgundy rose to 20.8 per cent, up from 15.7 per cent. Champagne fell to 8.5 per cent from 13 per cent. Tuscany took 11.6 per cent and Piedmont 4 per cent.

The most-traded wines by value tell the story better than the shares. They were Château Calon Ségur 2006, Leflaive's Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles 2023 and Lynch-Bages 1996. Two are Bordeaux from vintages that are now fully mature and well documented. In Burgundy, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Leflaive alone made up about a third of the region's trade. In Piedmont, Giacomo Conterno and Gaja accounted for more than half.

The pattern is sharper still in Tuscany. According to Liv-ex data reported in August, nine wines made up more than 80 per cent of Tuscan traded value in 2026. In 2025, the same share was spread across 21 wines.

Who stopped buying

The other change in the November update is geographic. British and American buyers cut their spending by more than 20 per cent. Asian buyers eased a little, and European buyers bought slightly more. The two buyer groups the trade has long counted on are holding back, at least for now.

What it means if you drink what you buy

For investors, this is a market that rewards the few labels everyone can name and leaves the rest thinly traded. That is less a recovery than a retreat to safety.

For collectors who buy to drink, it is good news. If demand is concentrated on a few dozen famous wines, the rest of the cellar is less contested. Well-made Bordeaux from good but unfashionable châteaux, and Burgundy below the grand names, are drawing far less of the trade's attention than the famous few.

The headline index will keep moving a few per cent either way. The more useful question is which wines are absent from the trading lists, and whether you would rather own them than the ones on it.

Sources: Liv-ex market updates, reported by Vinetur (3 November and 13 August 2026); Cellar Advisor (9 October 2026).