Chinese put down roots in Bordeaux
SAINT-MARTIN-DU-PUY, France: The walled courtyard under the gracefully decaying 15th-century tower and the irregular pond, stone-lined and shaped roughly like a kidney, caught Hayan Cheng's eye.
"The Chinese connected with the pond and its irregularity," said Bruno Roussy, who sometimes acts as a go-between for Chinese wanting to do business in the West. "Because the Chinese believe evil spirits don't like crooked lines."
He added: "The Chinese are very superstitious."
The pond, the courtyard and the tower belonged to the imposing Château Latour-Laguens, with two towers, including one for a bell, and a crenellated lookout, in this wine-growing hamlet of several hundred people southeast of Bordeaux.
Superstitious or not, Cheng, 28, bought it all in January for about $3 million, the first time a château in the prestigious Bordeaux region had been sold to the Chinese. Cheng was not in France to hawk the usual Chinese-manufactured bargain-basement apparel, or toys, or household appliances. Rather, she came as the daughter of a vastly wealthy Chinese businessman, Zuochang Cheng, whose huge trading conglomerate already imports wines to China from Australia, Italy and South Africa, and the idea was to buy some respectability.
"He said to himself, 'I have no point of reference or credibility in the field of wine, so I'll go to France, to the roots, and buy a château,' " said Roussy, describing the reasoning behind Cheng's decision to send his daughter to France in search of a castle and vineyard. His idea was to acquire and master the technique of winemaking as it is done in France, Roussy said. "He wanted to be the first group in China to have a kind of embassy in France."
Roussy, 48, who divides his time between the Bordeaux region and China, met Cheng through a mutual friend. A former police commander, Cheng had gone into business, establishing one of China's largest trading groups, the Longhai International trading Company, in Qingdao, on China's east coast. In recent years the group has branched out into wine, and his daughter became president of a wine-importing affiliate, now to be known as Latour-Laguens (Qingdao) International Wine Company. Its Web site is up and running, in French, English and Mandarin. The Beijing summer Olympics, just around the corner, are expected to increase wine consumption, and Qingdao, long known for its beer industry, is the site of the Olympic sailing competitions.
In search of the château of their dreams, the Chengs were shown more than 30 available châteaux in the Bordeaux region, said Daniel Carmagnat, whose real estate agency in nearby Sainte-Foy-la-Longue, the A2Z Agency, specializes in wine-producing properties. "She took lots of pictures, and she was constantly on the phone with China," he said of Hayan Cheng. "But when I showed her this one, she flipped."
The Château Latour-Laguens, not to be confused with the First Growth Château Latour farther north, was typical of many of the other 30. Its owner, Serge Laguens, inherited the property from his father, who had purchased it together with the château shortly after World War II. The château's vineyards, with their cabernet, sauvignon blanc, merlot and cabernet franc grapes, produced red, white and rose wines, most of it sold in bulk, some in bottles.
But the market for such midrange wines, the specialty of this region of the Bordeaux, has contracted of late, squeezed by competition from California, Australia, South Africa and Chile. Laguens, 61, found it increasingly difficult to run the property; a son and daughter were too busy with careers elsewhere to take over.
As word leaked out that the Chinese planned some improvements to the château and its grounds, there was some grumbling among neighbors. Roussy, who favors black leather and drives a black Porsche, said the Chengs would restore the castle, creating accommodations for guests who would be invited to wine tastings and seminars on wine.
"They want a museum of wine, in order not to lose the château's history, and to show how the work was done by hand," he said. "No Disneyland."
They also plan to double the acreage under cultivation, he said, to about 60 hectares, or 150 acres, if needed by acquiring additional property.
"It is important that foreigners are coming," said Roussy. Then, with a sweep of his hand toward the surrounding vineyards, he added: "This is dying."
In his office on the edge of Bordeaux, Hervé Olivier, the regional director of a public-private agency that oversees land use, explained that the last several years had plunged the wine growers of the Bordeaux region into crisis.
"Sales have been poor," he said. "The largest market is the domestic French market, but the French are drinking less wine. And the so-called New World wines, from Australia or South Africa, are very competitive."
The 150 or so grand houses, with names like Château Margaux and Saint-Émilion, continue to flourish, he said. "But the rest are going through difficult years."
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