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Alibaba boss buys Burgundy vineyards
Joe Tsai, the billionaire chairman and co-founder of Chinese ecommerce platform Alibaba, has reportedly joined a consortium acquiring vineyard parcels in Burgundy.
Tsai, a Taiwanese-Canadian business magnate, has been named as part of a consortium that has acquired grape-growing parcels in one of France’s most prestigious wine regions, according to Bloomberg.
Corporate filings show that the plots purchased by the consortium are in Gevrey-Chambertin, the largest wine-producing village in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Located in the far north of the Côtes de Nuits, the village is home to nine Grands Crus. The Tsai consortium’s parcels are in appellations known as Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyeres-Chambertin and Ruchottes-Chambertin, a filing shows. The Pinot Noir plots are relatively close to one another.
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.
Consortium partners include Oliver Weisberg, chief executive officer of Blue Pool Capital, Tsai’s Hong Kong-based family office.
Tsai isn’t the first of Alibaba’s bosses to pivot into wine. Fellow founder Jack Ma bought Château de Sours in Bordeaux’s Entre-Deux-Mers in 2016 for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 1792 by the Comtes du Richemont, Château de Sours produces red, white and rosé from Entre-Deux-Mers.
Ma followed in the footsteps of a long line of Chinese investors buying up Bordeaux châteaux. More than 100 estates in the region were sold to Chinese investors between 2010 and 2016.
The purchase of estates and vineyards in France is now popular among international billionaires too. Tsai is the latest to invest in Burgundy: Bernard Arnault, founder of LVMH, as well as the Bouygues, Dassault, Perrodo, Pinault and Rothschild families all bought estates as their empires expanded.
The properties that Tsai has a stake in do not produce their own wine.
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