Rare older Champagnes drive a selective market recovery, Liv-ex says

Signs of recovery are emerging in the Champagne market, but the rebound is narrow and concentrated in a small group of older, rarer and non-vintage wines, according to a new analysis from Liv-ex, the fine wine exchange.

The report says Champagne has started to regain ground after a steep correction that followed the price surge of 2021 and 2022. But it also says the recovery is uneven. Demand is returning first to specific labels that buyers see as scarce, mature or better value, rather than lifting the category as a whole.

That divide is most visible in older vintage wines. Liv-ex found that some of the first Champagnes to show a sustained rise in trade prices after the market turned were mature or hard-to-find bottles. One of the clearest examples was Salon 2002, whose volume-weighted average trade price rose from £7,400 per 12-bottle case in August 2025 to £9,089 in November 2025.

Liv-ex said that pattern reflects a broader change in buying behavior. After several years in which Champagne prices fell quickly from their peak, merchants became reluctant to hold large inventories and instead bought mainly to fill immediate demand. That started to shift in August 2025, when lower prices began to attract buyers back into the market.

The report says the pullback by U.S. buyers after tariffs were imposed in April 2025 initially looked like a major setback for Champagne. Instead, the price drop that followed opened the door to other buyers, especially in Europe, who saw better value at lower levels. At the same time, buyers increasingly turned to the secondary market for older vintages rather than taking new releases at what Liv-ex described as high opening prices.

By the third quarter of 2025, Liv-ex said that change had started to alter the balance between supply and demand. Buyers, who had held the upper hand through 2023 and 2024 as cash-strapped sellers accepted lower bids, were facing more competition. As demand improved and some merchants’ inventories thinned, sellers had less reason to cut prices further. Liv-ex said its Champagne 50 index, which tracks leading wines from the region, stabilized and moved back toward its long-term uptrend.

Even so, the report stops well short of calling a broad recovery. It says the market remains cautious, with many merchants still recovering from losses taken over the previous three years and with some buyers still under pressure from weaker disposable income. Liv-ex argues that a run of strong, high-volume vintages has added to the problem by leaving the market saturated with recent releases.

That glut has put pressure on newer vintage Champagnes in particular. According to the report, several recent releases from major houses came to market at prices above those of other vintages already available on the secondary market, including some older or better-rated wines. In that environment, merchants and collectors have had a strong incentive to buy back vintages instead of accepting full allocations of new stock from producers and agents.

Liv-ex said a similar pattern has appeared in other fine wine categories, including Bordeaux, where some merchants have reduced allocations and looked for value in already-released wines. In Champagne, the effect has been a decline in exchange offers that had once been supported by large volumes of discounted recent vintages, alongside a rise in the value of bids.

The latest trading data suggests that buyers are still rewarding a relatively small set of wines. Among actively traded vintage Champagnes in recent months, Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2015 led the group with upward-moving prices. Liv-ex said its volume-weighted average trade price rose 7.7% between May and June.

The report also points to strength in non-vintage Champagne, a category it says is partly shielded from the problems now facing recent vintage releases. Non-vintage wines do not compete directly with cheaper or more highly rated back vintages in the same way. Producers also have more flexibility in managing supply because they can blend reserve wines and release stock more gradually.

Within that segment, Liv-ex highlighted Selosse Substance and Selosse Initial as wines with strong upward price trajectories. It also said Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle 26 had started to post rising trade prices.

Another area drawing significant money is high-end assortment cases. Liv-ex said assortment cases from Salon and Selosse alone accounted for 11.5% of Champagne’s traded value in 2026, despite making up a much smaller share of volume. Their rarity and high price points have helped them outperform broader market trends.

The report presents that concentration of value as one of the clearest signs of how selective the current recovery is. Rather than spreading evenly across houses, labels and vintages, buying is clustering around wines seen as safer holdings or better long-term prospects. Trades are leading quoted market prices in some cases, Liv-ex said, suggesting that certain bottles are turning higher before the change is fully reflected in list pricing.

For producers and merchants, the message is more complicated. While rising prices in a few prestigious wines can help restore confidence, they do not solve the problem of oversupply in newer vintages. As long as recent releases come to market at levels that compare poorly with older alternatives, the report suggests, buyers are likely to remain disciplined and selective.

That leaves much of the region in a split market. Older prestige cuvées, rare bottlings and some non-vintage wines are finding renewed support, while many newer vintage Champagnes still face heavy competition from back vintages already available in the market.