March 2025 Wrap-Up
Fine wine markets, ageing Baby Boomers, and soft-porn influencers walk into a wine shop…
Happy Fool’s Day!
Fine wine markets, ageing Baby Boomers, and soft-porn influencers walk into a bar…
While tradition dictates I should prank you with a made-up Château or a spoof EP score, the real market might be pulling enough tricks of its own.
According to our latest In the Mood for Wine survey, most respondents expect the Liv-ex 100 Index to decline slightly in 2025. Bad news, good news, I think—it seems that people think fine wine is finally bottoming out.
The pain may be ending.
Or just beginning?
“The Great Wealth Transfer and the coming fine wine market reckoning” — by Greg Sherwood MW
While we’re still debating whether fine wine has bottomed out, Greg Sherwood MW delivers a gut punch: the pain in the fine wine market may have only just begun.
In “The Great Wealth Transfer and the Coming Fine Wine Reckoning”, Sherwood explores the demographic and economic bomb quietly ticking in bonded warehouses.
Boomers (born 1946–64) and the Silent Generation (1928–45) are expected to pass on $84.4 trillion in assets by 2045—$72.6 trillion directly to heirs. In the UK alone, £5–6 billion of fine wine sits in storage under Boomer ownership.
What happens when the next generation—less sentimental, more liquid—decides to sell?
Implications for investors:
Market Saturation: Too much supply of certain labels could deflate prices.
Portfolio Diversification: Investors may shift towards low-volume or emerging region wines.
Lower Entry Barriers: Falling prices could welcome a new wave of collectors.
Sherwood’s takeaway is that a surge in supply will still pressure wine prices down for a longer period of time.
Latour 2016: The Must-Have Loss
But for now, we are fine.
Several merchants told me their allocations of Latour 2016 sold out in minutes. Clearly, not all of you read our recent piece: “How Much Money Latour Investors Have Lost: A Quick Calculation.”
(And no, I haven’t forgotten all the requests for an Yquem 2022 version. Time will come for that too.)
What followed was a cascade of comments around whether fine wine investing even makes sense.
Here are the most common objections I’ve heard in the past few weeks:
“Wine is for drinking, not trading.” Treating it like an asset devalues its cultural, emotional, and social significance.
“Financialisation has pushed prices up.” The more investors pile in, the fewer people can afford to drink it.
“The logistics are brutal.” Storage, insurance, perishability—none of it screams 'attractive asset'.
“Access is a joke.” Without allocations, you're just paying inflated prices and eroding your margins.
“It’s a wasting asset.” Cellars are sunk costs, not investment portfolios.
So, in light of all the criticism against fine wine as an asset class, thank you Jason Wilson for giving me the space to write a silly article about the very serious business of wine investing.
Thankfully, there are people like Dr Gertjan Verdickt, Professor of Finance, who spend their time and skills analysing this emerging corner of the investment universe.
In his book, The Passion Portfolio, he draws a fascinating parallel: wine is more like corporate bonds than commodities.
Wine ≠ Art
I read a piece by an art market analyst. I don’t know much about art, but I couldn’t help wondering whether wine investment is similar similar in that way. If investors only buy the big names, are they investing—or just historians?
But while art is fixed—there will only ever be one Picasso—wine is dynamic. First Growths still produce every vintage. Their product evolves. Sometimes it improves. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Despite this, we still remain obsessed with the classics.
Latour 2016 is proof.
Yet, at the same time, Bordeaux’s market share has been shrinking for 15 years. That shift matters. It suggests the market is opening up.
On one side, some investors prefer blue-chip wines. They value low risk and long-term stability. On the other, newer and more involved buyers look to experimental producers. They are searching for asymmetric returns.
As a result, we need to change how we speak about fine wine—diversifying the conversation to reflect what the market is already telling us.
Lessons from my experience in China.
After publishing “What Have the Merchants Ever Done for Us?” on Tim Atkin MW’s site, I was invited by Wine Owners’ CEO Nick Martin to speak at their networking event.
I challenged whether merchants are really adapting to younger drinkers.
My perspective came from launching a wine business in China, where everything—from logistics to marketing—moves at tech speed.
In the UK, wine came first and tech is still catching up. In China, tech came first, and wine had to squeeze into the frame. It’s a different world: fast, transparent, digital-native.
Three lessons that stuck with me:
FOMO is not a strategy. TikTok was booming, but our wine campaigns flopped. Alcohol gets penalised in algorithms. Hype ≠ relevance.
The best messenger isn’t always who you’d expect. Our most successful partner? A soft-porn fiction writer on WeChat. Her readers trusted her. Loyalty beats credentials.
Belonging beats scarcity. We built small WeChat groups to test demand and build trust. When collectors feel like participants, not targets, sales soar.
As the wine world grapples with stagnation, some say the worst:
That wine is dead.
That young people don’t drink it.
But I don’t think wine is dead.
I think it just changed address.
We need a wine industry that’s:
Faster. Braver. Less nostalgic.
More curious. More open.
More connected.
And yes—
one that ships faster!
And on that note…
Congratulations to WineFi for their Crowdfunding!
A massive congrats to Callum Woodcock and the team at WineFi, who just raised over £1 million on Crowdcube from 300+ investors.
A sign that wine investing is alive and well? Maybe.
Proof that younger generations are still excited about wine? Absolutely.
And Finally…
For the 10% of you who speak Italian 🇮🇹: I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Iacopo Valori for Rai3’s FarWest, directed by Salvo Sottile. We talked about fine wine investing, cultural shifts, and what happens when this tradition-bound industry gets shaken up.
Thanks for reading.
Sara Danese
One more thing…
If you like this format and want to contribute, send me any articles or charts you find interesting at sara@inthemoodforwine.com.
Thanks again.
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Not a silly article! A good one!