Depends on your sector, I guess. Have you spoken to your colleagues about the status of transactional work, especially in the commercial markets? How about mergers and acquisitions? Not that these sectors create the market, but it does show that there are some sectors that are not hot right now. And many big Ballers come out of these sectors.
My colleagues now are the people I play golf with and drink wine with. I just know that the US economy had fourth quarter 2023 real growth of over 3%. While you working stiffs may have less transactional work because interest rates are higher (generally needed when the economy is growing), tech stocks went flying at the end of last year giving a lot of money to other big Ballers (boy do I hate the term Ballers other than maybe for baseball players). That said, I hope that transactional work comes back for you. I do remember and appreciate the cyclical nature of the legal practice and I hope that you continue to do well.
Also, to be honest, since my wine purchases have gone down a lot over the last number of years (I am more in the drinking down my overly large cellar mode), until this thread, I did not know the price of “baller” wines have come down. Golf club prices are still going up if that matters to you.
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Economy is slumping in much of Europe and Asia, where a lot of supposedly allocated desirable wine were headed to. Of course you’re not going to see select high-end good vintage burg in quantity with a banging price anytime soon, but if street prices that I saw on my recent trip to Tokyo is any indication, then we’re headed there.
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I’m in infrastructure, we’ve never seen this much action in our field. It’s my commercial transactions partners that are seeing the slowdown.
It really depends on the wine. Generally speaking the principle of more you go up, harder you fall does hold true.
Just sharing two examples:
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Krug 2002: down probably 30%. See the action market chart. Avg auction price down from $777 to $570. Recently clearing price is even lower than $570
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2005 La Mission: down by 15% or so
But at the same time there are also wines that have gone up. Hubert Lignier CDLR is a good example.
I don’t know if it’s the best time to buy but certainly things have cooled off.
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Rightly or wrongly, I use my discussions with a friend of mine at KPMG as a bellwether. When she tells me they are having layoffs, it leads me to believe that the large companies who use consulting services are beginning to tighten their collective belts. For the most part, there seems to be a correlation.
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That appears to show 2008 Krug … just as fine a wine to look at for the 2022->2024 dip, but data doesn’t go back far enough to capture the full picture IMO.
A look at 2002 Krug shows the same dip from 2022 onward, but the price is still significantly higher than pre-Covid. It’s up nearly 50% since 2020. Just down from the artificial peak created by a bunch of people with plenty of actual free money (gov’t cheese) and nearly free money (2% interest) and nothing to spend it on because they can’t leave the house.
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19 roumier bm at 1500 at auction?
Sure - I don’t think anyone is saying wine prices have crashed. We’re not going back to 2017 prices. But the decline over the last ~18 months is real.
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Sorry my bad. You are right. Here is Krug 2002. I recently pulled the trigger on a case. Just couldn’t wait anymore.
Perhaps. I think a bigger indicator would be if all of the big 4 accounting firms had general layoffs. Otherwise it would be hard to tell if it’s entirely the demand for consultants or if KPMG specifically over anticipated the demand and hired too many new folks over the last year or two. If so they might be thinning out the ranks while the other firms aren’t.
(This coming from a former consultant / big 4 employee).
I am currently working in house in Pharma and will say that the sector is quite active from an M&A perspective.
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Covid? Seems like the pandemic brought ridiculous deals as restaurants shut down.
I don’t operate at the high end so I can’t say what is going on there, but for the wines I buy pricing seems to be decent, if also in a bit of flux. I pay the most attention to Piedmont and I’d say it’s odd right now. I’ll see what appears to be lower prices on Barolo, including back vintages (though often clearly imported, with 6 pack minimums) and then very ambitious pricing on lesser wines. Maybe that also signals buyers looking for deals though, and therefore an overall softening.
No actually. I had a Wine-Searcher alert set, and it popped up at Parcelle Wine - Maybe they listed it by mistake? I jumped on it though and bought three. 
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It seems the big consulting firms tend to have layoffs around the same time. Not always and not across all sectors. Ironically, my friend also does a lot of work with big pharma.
Relevant:
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I had been stocking my cellar pretty deeply. I am pulling back on buying mostly due to lack of expansion space. I should have a 9-10 year cellar and will definitely hold many bottles longer than that. If I was still building I would focus on backfilling v buying new releases.
How much? Just bought 2020 Chaillot for 180 € (apparently discounted from original price 200 €).
Do you kindly care to share the names of anything you found at/below en primeur pricing? In particular I’m hoping to find things that are ready to drink either now or imminently.
I saw a bunch of 2016 going below EP prices at a recent HDH auction. Zachys also had lots of 2020 well below EP in their recent sale.
I have seen a few cases of 2020 FGs in London going for around $450, which strikes me as a buying opportunity
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After collecting for nearly 20 years, and then it started with a lot of backfilling to try mature wines, the prices have always cycled up. Not in a straight line, but generally up. I look back and wish I had bought more… Unless you think we’re in a price bubble, and I don’t even really expect that with Burgundy over the long haul, now is generally the time to buy.
That’s what I have kept telling myself all these years anyway and time just keeps reinforcing it. I hold a lot of wine I couldn’t afford to buy at current new vintage prices.
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