Wealth
A Wine Billionaire Emerges in Bordeaux
Four decades after her father bought Chateau Margaux, Corinne Mentzelopoulos has built the vineyard into a billion-dollar business.
The Chateau Margaux manor house, known as the “Versailles du Medoc.”
Photographer: Georges Gobet/AFP
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 purchased almost on a whim three years earlier.
Today, the vineyard has made her a billionaire. It’s 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.