L'autorité de régulation française Safer a récemment signalé que les prix moyens des vignobles en Côted'Or ont augmenté de onze pour cent en 2023 pour atteindre 983 800 euros par hectare. Selon Safer, des vignobles Grand Cru en Bourgogne ont déjà été vendus pour plusieurs millions d'euros par hectare. Certaines transactions concernaient des parcelles de moins d'un hectare. Joe Tsai possède, selon Forbes, une fortune de 8,9 milliards de dollars.
Joe Tsai, the chairman and co-founder of the China e-commerce pioneer Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., has joined the ranks of billionaires investing in prestigious French vineyards.
An avid wine collector, the 60-year-old Tsai is part of a consortium that has acquired grape-growing parcels in Burgundy, said people familiar with the matter. The partners include Oliver Weisberg, CEO of Tsai’s Blue Pool Capital family office, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
A representative for Tsai and Weisberg declined to comment in an emailed statement. Local wine producer Christophe Roumier confirmed by phone that he is associated with the group.
Tsai’s foray into French vineyards puts him among other ultra-wealthy wine investors — including luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault, founder of LVMH; as well as the Bouygues, Dassault, Perrodo, Pinault and Rothschild families, who bought estates as their empires expanded. The properties that Tsai has a stake in don’t produce their own wine but are in one of the most highly regarded areas of Burgundy.
The plots are in Gevrey-Chambertin in the Cote de Nuits area, known as the Champs-Elysees of Burgundy, corporate filings show. Many wines from that region carry the highest “Grand Cru” appellation and can retail for hundreds of dollars a bottle if not more.
Also in the Cote de Nuits is LVMH-controlled Clos des Lambrays and the Pinaults’ Clos de Tart, acquired in 2017 for a reported €220 million ($243 million) after patriarch Francois Pinault outmaneuvered Jack Ma, another Alibaba co-founder, to take control. Ma bought Chateau de Sours in Bordeaux in 2016.
The Tsai consortium’s parcels are in appellations known as Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyères-Chambertin and Ruchottes-Chambertin, a filing shows. Maps and photos produced by the official Vins de Bourgogne website indicate that the domains are relatively close to each other and known for their pinot noir grapes. Wines from the areas that are south of Dijon were granted the “Grand Cru” appellation in 1937.
Land registry data shows that one parcel sold in 2021 for about €18 million. It’s unclear how much the consortium has invested in total.
A Canadian citizen born in Taiwan, Tsai has a net worth of about $6.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, partly derived from his 1.4% stake in Alibaba. Shares in the platform have suffered under a Chinese regulator crackdown that began in 2020, and while the scrutiny softened in August, the stock is still down more than 70% from a high that year.
Through Blue Pool Capital, Tsai has diversified his fortune by investing in luxury property in Portugal and a penthouse on New York’s Billionaires Row. Tsai has also backed the film studio Ink Factory and controls the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Liberty professional basketball teams, as well as the Barclays Center where they play. In 2020, he thanked keen Nets fans with branded bottles of wine.
Tsai and Weisberg are among producers of a 2019 documentary film by Marie-Ange Gorbanevsky called "L’Ame du Vin" or the "Soul of Wine," which features vineyards in the area where they invested. Tsai was also among business executives who were invited for lunch at the Elysee Palace by President Emmanuel Macron just before the Paris Olympics got underway in July.
A Yale University alumnus and former lacrosse athlete, Tsai quit a $700,000-a-year job at the investment firm Investor AB in the late 1990s to join Alibaba for a monthly salary of $50.
Source : CrainCurrency
