La Place de Bordeaux, the historic distribution network that was first established to distribute Bordeaux fine wines, has found a new lease of life outside the French wine region with the autumn release of non-Bordeaux fine wines steadily gaining traction.
According to a latest Liv-Ex report on the ancient marketplace, La Place’s autumn release of non-Bordeaux wines has become an equally important event on its calendar along with its spring/summer Bordeaux En Primeur.
Differentiating the two important events, “unlike the En Primeur campaign, which is fluid, reactive and driven by châteaux decisions on pricing and release times, the autumn La Place campaign is more structured, which makes it easier for the supply chain to plan around,” wrote Lix-Ex.
La Place’s autumn release in September has grown beyond its first ever release of Almaviva 1998 from Chile to include over 100 different wines from Argentina, Australia, the USA, New Zealand, Austria, Chile, China, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Uruguay. Even French wines from Champagne and the Rhône have joined the marketplace.
Overall, close to 108 wines from 32 regions across 11 countries are expected to be released via La Place this autumn alone.
While wines from South Africa, Uruguay and China appear on the global stage via La Place, and New Zealand just most recently made its debut on the platform, the majority of autumn releases come from Italy, the USA and France (Champagne, Rhone) itself.
The allure was apparent, producers join the marketplace for the prestige of the La Place system and negociants’ ability to penetrate foreign markets.
The rise of non-Bordeaux wines’ popularity on secondary market happens at a time when buyers are no longer reliant on a single region. According to Liv-Ex, Bordeaux’s trade share has been faltering since 2010, when it accounted for 95.7% of total trade by value. Year-to-date, it sits at a record low of 34.1%. Bordeaux is also no longer the most traded fine wine region in some key markets such as Asia.
Last year, a record year of 12,055 fine wines were traded on the secondary market. A big portion of
these wines came from the Rest of the World (RoW) category, adds Liv-Ex, majority of which came from the Rest of the World (RoW) category. Year-to-date its market share has expanded from 0.8% in 2010 to 4.6% of the total market.
