The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100, the headline index for the secondary fine wine market, peaked in October 2022 and spent the next three years falling. As of April 2026 it sits at 321.25, up 1.8% over the past year but still 8.7% below where it was two years ago. Burgundy fell harder along the way: the Liv-ex Burgundy 150 is down 12.9% over the last two years, though over a five-year horizon it remains up 6.0%.
The market stabilised through autumn 2025, and the early 2026 data points to a turn. In April the Fine Wine 100 closed above its 20-month simple moving average. Liv-ex’s analysts note the same move in 2015 and 2020 preceded stronger upward periods. Whether that pattern holds this time is not for us to call.
That is a long way from a crash. It is also a long way from a normal market. For three years almost everything has been worth less in the morning than it was the night before, and the trade has had to adjust.
Below is what corrected, why, what hasn’t, and where the buying is at the start of summer 2026. Having stayed out of En Primeur, we spent the last three years buying and selling into the correction rather than carrying stock bought at the top.
What happened, in numbers
Of the major regions, Burgundy fell hardest through the depth of the correction. Champagne, which had become a serious investment category for the first time in its history, corrected hard from a vertical run-up but is now marginally up over the past year. Bordeaux moved less in either direction; the broader Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 is down only 1.0% over the past year and essentially flat in 2026 so far. Italy held up best of the major regions, the Italy 100 up 0.9% over the year. The worst-performing category, deeper than any region as a whole, was Bordeaux Second Wines: the Liv-ex Second Wine 50 is down 22.7% over two years and 29.8% over five.
On the Liv-ex Bordeaux 500, which tracks the top of the Bordeaux secondary market, the index now sits 13.9% below where it was two years ago and 16.1% below five years ago. Mid-tier Burgundy lost more than that. Vintage Champagne from major houses lost between 20% and 35% of its peak depending on the wine. Some specific cases that had run up sharply through 2021 and 2022 lost half.
Why it happened
Three drivers, in order of importance.
Interest rates
The UK base rate climbed from a 0.1% emergency low to 5.25% by August 2023 and stayed there until the first cut in August 2024. Fine wine had spent a decade competing with cash that paid nothing. When cash began paying 5%, the marginal buyer left the market. The funds that had piled in during the 2010s started selling, sometimes back to the trade, sometimes to private buyers, sometimes nowhere because there was no bid.
The end of a buying era in Asia
Hong Kong and mainland Chinese demand for Bordeaux First Growths and top Burgundy had set the floor under prices since 2010. By 2022 that demand had thinned considerably. Part of that was because the 2008 to 2014 boom had already moved a great deal of wine into Asian cellars. Part was the macroeconomic picture in China shifting. Part was the Asian collector base rotating from Bordeaux towards Burgundy and Champagne, with smaller average tickets. The Asian buyer is still in the market in 2026 but at a different size.
The 2018 to 2022 En Primeur overhang
The Bordeaux campaigns of those years sold an enormous amount of wine on release, often at prices that left limited room for upside. When the secondary market turned, that wine came back through the trade as physical stock looking for buyers. Cases of 2018 and 2019 Classed Growths traded below their EP release prices, a pattern that had not been visible at scale for a decade.
What did not correct
A few categories held up or corrected only modestly.
The very top of Burgundy. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Leroy, Domaine Armand Rousseau, Roumier, Mugnier and de Vogüé in the reds; Coche-Dury, Raveneau and Dauvissat in the whites. Some at the apex did soften through 2024, but the moves were smaller in percentage terms than anything broader in Burgundy. The top tier has held up better than the Burgundy 150 as a whole.
Mature Bordeaux from the great vintages. 1990, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010 in the right châteaux, properly stored. These wines behave more like drinking stock than investment stock by 2026, and the correction barely touched them.
The top-of-house Champagnes from the great years. Older Krug, Salon, Cristal and Dom Pérignon in particular held up. Below that, vintage Champagne corrected with everything else.
Top Italian held up too, with less of a run-up to give back.
Where the buying is now
The activity through the worst of the correction was concentrated at the top of the market. In a thin market, the wines that trade are the wines that always trade: the very top of Burgundy, mature First Growth Bordeaux, top Italian, the most-quoted Champagnes. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50, which tracks the most-traded names, is down 12.6% over the last two years, in line with the broader market rather than insulated from it.
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche 2019 has come back from around £5,750 a bottle In Bond three years ago to £4,750 today, a 17% fall. Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin 2019 has corrected further, from around £3,500 a bottle three years ago to £2,299 today, down 34%. Both are apex Burgundies that, in a normal market, do not need to soften to find a buyer. They softened. The dynamic was the one that defines any prolonged downturn in a collector market: liquidity at the top, illiquidity below it.
The wines that have held up best are mature great-vintage Bordeaux, the drinking-window stock that comes out of private cellars. Château Mouton Rothschild 2009 traded around £517 a bottle In Bond three years ago and is closer to £442 today, a 15% softening. Château Lafite Rothschild 2010 is down around 20% over the same period. These are wines whose buyers increasingly drink them rather than sell them on, and the market for mature First Growth in the drinking window has held up better than the rest.
Large formats lost their per-bottle premium across most of the market. In a thin market, buyers favoured twelve-bottle cases over magnums and larger formats. Wines with provenance gaps were harder to move at any size.
Among the wines that corrected most, two segments are notable. Mature Bordeaux Classed Growths from the 2014 to 2018 window are meaningfully cheaper than they were three years ago. Château Léoville Las Cases 2018 traded around £2,172 In Bond three years ago and is closer to £1,606 today, a 26% fall. Even the great 2016 has come off 16%, from around £2,800 to £2,350. Step into 2014 or 2017 and the discounts are larger still.
Mid-tier Burgundy has corrected as well. Strip the apex names out of the Burgundy 150 and the fall is materially larger than the headline 12.9%. Four-figure prices for a well-made village or lesser Premier Cru case are back in the conversation, having largely disappeared at the top of the market.
Bordeaux Second Wines, the worst performers of the correction, have not come back.
The MCW perspective
Our last En Primeur campaign was Bordeaux 2005; we have been secondary-only since. That is a long-standing position rather than a market call: we prefer wines we can ship, taste and price against a live secondary market. It means we have spent the last three years doing what we have done since 1999, which is buy from private cellars and trade stock, and sell to drinkers, collectors and merchants.
The job has been harder in absolute terms because volumes have been thinner, but the way we work has not had to change. The stock now coming through the secondary market is being priced realistically by sellers who have accepted that 2022 is not coming back any time soon.
Where the index goes next we will leave to others. The wines we are putting on the list at May 2026 prices are wines we would be content to drink, and content to keep.
A reasonable starting point
If you are a buyer who has been waiting on the sidelines for three years, this is a more interesting market than it has been for quite some years. If you have a cellar that you bought in the 2017 to 2021 window and you are looking at the values now, the practical question is how to use that wine well, which is rarely a selling decision.
If you would like a current valuation of what you hold, or a conversation about what’s worth picking up at present pricing, get in touch.