News roundup

Online trading platforms accessible to all are proliferating in the wine market. London fine wine trader Bordeaux Index was the first off the blocks in the UK in a strategy long-planned by their financial trader founder Gary Boom (cited as 37th most powerful wino in Decanter magazine's recent Power List). Their platform sets buying and selling prices of the top bordeaux and is already a hit with investors. At almost exactly the same time as Bordeaux Index launched, West Coast cellar management applications Vinfolio and Cellartracker announced that they were to co-operate on a collector-to-collector online trading platform which will allow wine lovers to trade stocks between themselves (not unlike the Bid for Wine scheme for which purple pagers have a special deal). Yesterday Berry Bros (Simon Berry, 25th most powerful...) announced that they are getting in on the act and expect to have their online trading system up and running by the end of the year. The idea is that Berry Bros customers can trade the wines they keep with Berrys, with Berrys taking a 10% cut.  And Fine & Rare Wines of London have launched a particularly user-friendly tool, an online cellar valuation, presumably hoping that this will inspire some of their customers to sell their wines through them. A good time for IT consultants to the fine wine trade...?

OIV has issued its latest stats on the southern hemisphere now that the 2009 harvest is over there. Although the area under vines has stabilised, OIV expects a 6.1% drop over 2008 in the volume of wine produced in the southern hemisphere in 2009. The decrease is most marked in Australia, where volumes are expected to be down by 11.5%, while total production in New Zealand was 13.7% more in 2009 than the record 2008 crop. Southern hemisphere vineyards represent 11.3% of world's total area under vine. Wine consumption decreased by 2.5% in the southern hemisphere with a relatively substantial drop in Brazil and Argentina according to OIV estimates.