Late Greek tycoon’s daughter turns run-down French vineyard into billion-dollar business
Decades after her tycoon father bought Chateau Margaux, near Bordeaux, on a whim, Corinne Mentzelopoulos now runs estate that produces prized fine wine
When her father died in 1980, Corinne Mentzelopoulos inherited a business empire that included 1,600 grocery stores, 80 buildings in central Paris, a hotel that was once the home of Louis XIV – and a run-down vineyard the family had bought almost on a whim three years earlier.
Today, the vineyard has made her a billionaire.
It is Chateau Margaux, one of just a handful of properties that can claim the prized Premier Cru designation bestowed by Napoleon III in 1855 upon Bordeaux’s very best terroirs for making wine.
“Margaux is not just a company, it’s something so special,” Mentzelopoulos says.
“The light is always different. It’s extraordinary in the [autumn]. I get emotional talking about it.”
Her father, a Greek-born supermarket tycoon, paid a relatively modest 72 million francs (US$16 million) for Margaux in 1977 after it had languished on the market for two years.
The explosion in demand for fine wine over the past four decades, and a growing crop of billionaires willing to pay top dollar for trophy assets, mean a first-growth estate such as Margaux could easily attract a price of US$1 billion – though Mentzelopoulos says her ideal buyer is “no one”.
Even if she’s not interested in selling, the potential price makes Mentzelopoulos one of France’s wealthiest women and Margaux, with just 81 employees, one of the world’s smallest billion-dollar businesses.