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."
By John Tagliabue-International Herald Tribune
