NEWS
KWEICHOW MOUNTAI OWNED BORDEAUX CHATEAU CHANGED HANDS UNDER COURT ORDER
By Siulan Law Mathews DipWSET
28-3-2022
Source: Chateau Loudenne
Bordeaux winery Chateau Loudenne, which was bought by China's Kweichow Moutai Group in 2013, has recently been sold to a French vintner under a commercial court order.
The Bordeaux winery became the third property of Vignobles Gouache, whose owner Christophe Gouache bought the winery in a bid to expand his wine making business of two properties namely Chateau Bellerive and Chateau Valeyrac.
Chateau Loudenne is a member of the Bordeaux Cru Bourgeois classification released in 2012, it currently has 132 hectares of vineyards. These include 62 hectares of organic vines.
The Kweichow Moutai Group once had an ambitious €5million plan to develop Chateau Loudenne into a top wine tourism resort.
However, this grandeur plan did not work out for Kweichow Moutai. When the Chinese government tightened control on capital outflow soon after the acquisition, the company failed to get state authorisation to fund the Chateau Loudenne project.
Two years after Kweichow Moutai became owner, Chateau Loudenne was brought to court for violating local labour laws in the dismissals of three Chinese employees.
In 2016, Kweichow Moutai’s French distributor, Maison des Cognacs Camus, became a minority shareholder of Chateau Loudenne.
However, the involvement of Maison des Camus failed to stop the demise of this project as Kweichow Moutai continued to be denied authorisation by the Chinese government.
Due to long-term arrears of salaries and other payments, Chateau Loudenne was taken over by the commercial court of Bordeaux in November last year.
The court put the winery under auction, it was bought by accountant turned vintner Christophe Gouache earlier this month.
The Kweichow Moutai group has not responded to the ownership change. CEO of Maison des Camus, Cyril Camus, expressed despair for the news but said that there is no point to continue the investment when the Chinese authorities refused to authorise it.
(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)
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