We are not expecting a new bull run anytime soon, but it does feel like a good time, to start buying again.
Liv-ex, the global fine wine trading platform, says secondary-market prices have fallen to levels not seen in a decade, and its executives are openly asking whether now is the time to start buying again. In September 2026, Liv-ex CEO James Miles posted on LinkedIn that "wine hasn't been cheaper since 2014," noting that prices have halved relative to the FTSE index since 2022 and are down close to 40 percent in real terms since 2022, close to prices at the bottom of the previous cycle.
Miles said prices bottomed out last year, that demand and supply dynamics, measured by the bid-to-offer ratio, are back to more normal levels, and that trade this quarter is up by a third on 2025. "We are not expecting a new bull run anytime soon, but it does feel like a good time, to start buying again," he said.
The Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 index, which tracks 1,000 wines from around the world, had temporarily fallen back to its 2020 low and has since returned to 2015 levels. Liv-ex analyst Sophia Gilmour wrote in a recent report that the broader market has undergone a structural reset, that the longer-term upward trendline has been broken, and that while that is bad news for those who bought three years ago and held, it is promising for those looking to enter the market.
Not a blanket signal
Tom Burchfield, Liv-ex head of decision intelligence, told the drinks business ahead of his opening address at the db conference on September 23 at the British Library in London that it may be the best time to buy fine wine in a decade, albeit with a caveat. With the broad index back to 2015 levels in real terms, he said, canny buyers can pick up wines at "the cheapest they've been in a decade," though some wines are troughing and rising while others are still falling.
Burchfield said there were clear signs that certain wines, including big names like Lafite 2016, bought at current prices could be expected to rise in value within a couple of years.
Where the pockets are
Liv-ex pointed to mature Bordeaux as a key area of opportunity: wines from the early 2000s are entering their drinking windows, require no further storage and are finally seeing stocks diminish as bottles are uncorked. Back vintages of First Growths are seeing a pattern similar to the Fine Wine 1000, particularly across the 2000-2005 vintages, with Lafite 2000 reportedly the cheapest it has been to buy in 18 years, while wines from 2006-2010 look healthy relative to supply. The bid-to-offer ratio for back-vintage Bordeaux sits at 1.7, against 0.7 for wines from 2020 and later.
Liv-ex said buyers can have more confidence that mature wines will be supported at their previous lows than that a new release will stop falling.
Burchfield advised buyers to stick with tried and trusted brands in tried and trusted regions rather than chasing emerging ones, pointing to back-vintage Bordeaux and top Burgundy as the sensible money. "Stick with what you know, and that's easy to trade; that's liquid," he said.
Trade data backs the sense of stabilization: Europeans are buying more wine at lower price levels following the withdrawal of U.S. buyers amid tariff threats, with the proportion of buyers from Central Europe rising from 10 percent to 35 percent by value between 2023 and 2026, while U.S. buyers are slowly returning, reducing surplus stock in Europe and supporting prices. Whether that is the floor or a ledge, the industry's merchants are watching the bid-to-offer ratios.