CEO & Chairman Philippe Sereys de Rothschild On The Driving Force Behind Château Mouton Rothschild

Photo Credit: GABRIEL GUIBERT

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER

PHOTOGRAPHY GABRIEL GUIBERT

SHOT ON LOCATION AT CHÂTEAU MOUTON ROTHSCHILD, PAUILLAC, FRANCE

Despite running one of the most prestigious wine brands in the world, Philippe Sereys de Rothschild sleeps very well at night. The charismatic chairman and CEO of Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA smiles widely as he recounts a recent run-in with a famous 3 Michelin-starred chef, whose name he discretely doesn’t reveal. “[The chef] asked me the other day if running this company stops me from sleeping at night, and I said, no absolutely not, don’t worry,” he shares with a charming French accent, English precise and perfect by virtue of many years spent in America (he received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1991 after graduating from Bordeaux Business School).

What does keep him up at night is something entirely different. “Someone who opens a bottle and says, ‘I’m unhappy,’ or someone that tastes our wine and says, ‘That could be better’ — that disturbs me. But running our company, protecting the environment, making sure we make smart investments… if those things stop me from sleeping at night, I’m going to do something else!” he declares.

Right now, of course, the 61-year-old entrepreneur is happy to be right where he is, literally — at home in the village of Pauillac, located within France’s famous Médoc region just northwest of Bordeaux — and metaphorically, working for the family business, which encompasses the famous Château Mouton Rothschild, premier cru classé (classified first growth), as well as Château Clerc Milon, and Château d’Armailhac, both fifth classified growths, Domaine de Baronarques, Mouton Cadet, Opus One, Almaviva, and Barons de Rothschild champagne.

But this was not always his pre-determined path. Before succeeding his mother, Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, on her death as chairman of the Supervisory Board of Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA in 2014, he spent two years as an analyst in the M&A department of Banque Lazard in New York and served as chief financial and administrative officer of one of the group’s main Italian subsidiaries, specializing in energy management and the environment; was the CFAO, then CEO, of SLP InfoWare, a French company producing market analysis/CRM software; and held senior executive positions at Natixis Investment Managers, then NEM Partners, two Natixis private equity funds. He also became co-founder, shareholder, and member of the Supervisory Board of Alma Learning, a group specializing in private education, distance learning, and training. Alma Learning has majority interests in the private school Cours Hattemer, Hattemer Academy, Cours Legendre, Cours Saint-Anne, and Euro Formadis, and is responsible for creating Jolt Capital, an investment fund focusing on new technologies. As such, Sereys de Rothschild is adamant that his life is like a harvest: there is no set outcome. Nature will take its course.

“[This role] has never been an obligation for me; it’s been an opportunity more than anything else. In other words, I stepped on the board of the company in 1991 because my mother asked me to. I was very close to what was happening in the company, obviously, although I didn’t have any — and I didn’t want any — operational decisions. When she passed away in 2014, I started to ask myself, Am I the right person to do it or not? And after thinking about it and discussing it with my family, we all agreed that I should spend 100 percent of my time managing the business.”

Photo Credit: Alain Benoit

He is of the firm belief that a family-owned business does not have to be family-run, but in this case, it became clear to him that his prior career history would be beneficial to his family’s storied first growth brand. “I think it’s important to add value to whatever you do, and if you don’t, it’s going to be deeply unsatisfying for the people you’re working with, and to yourself. If you have a feeling that you are the right person to do it, and it’s going to be beneficial to your life as well as a good thing for the company, the answer should be ‘yes.’ I was very happy to do it yesterday. I’ll be very happy to do it tomorrow. I’m very happy to do it today, and I think it’s going very well. But nobody knows what life is about, and what’s going to happen. Nothing is engraved in marble; things can change every day. [This business] takes a lot of energy, a lot of concentration, a lot of commitment, and a lot of availability. If you’re not motivated and if you don’t feel that people are motivated by it, then you should stop immediately. If you’re not doing it with a smile in a happy way, then don’t do it — do something else.”

Happiness — especially for those who love and appreciate Mouton Rothschild’s wines — is an ever-present concern. “I am not a winemaker; I am not here to make wine. What I am here to do is make sure that the people who drink it are happy. I’m here to make sure that people who do open a bottle of a product — into which we put so much passion — have a great time. I couldn’t be more unhappy than people telling me, ‘I opened a bottle of Mouton, and it wasn’t what I expected.’ That’s really our mission, to make sure that people who enjoy our wines really enjoy them.”

As such, there’s a remarkable amount of pressure to produce. Not just because of his personal quest for perfection, but because of the brand itself. There are only five brands included in this extremely exclusive category, inclusive of Château Mouton Rothschild, which became so during the tenure of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the grandfather whose name Sereys de Rothschild wears today. As such, he also bears the weight of helming such a storied brand — and he bears it well.

“When you’re managing a company where people have been achieving great things for generations, you can’t take it lightly. I’m trying to do the right thing in a very complicated market, but you can always do better. When you are producing some of the best wines in the world, staying up there at the top of the mountain is difficult,” he explains.

At least, it isn’t lonely at the top: Sereys de Rothschild has a team of people behind him, and shares ownership of the brand with his siblings, Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild and Camille Sereys de Rothschild. All three collectively work to bring continued greatness to the house, innovating together — in 2015, they founded the Philippine de Rothschild Corporate Foundation to honor their mother’s memory and of which he has been the president since 2017 — and separately.

On his end, Sereys de Rothschild is responsible for quite a lot. He played a leading role in the creation of the Champagne arm of the business nearly 20 years ago, from the first harvest in 2005 to its international launch in 2010. He is now in the completion phase of two facilities, one for the conditioning of the bottles, and the other for blending, the former of which is 98 percent energy independent. Sereys de Rothschild has also made investments in vine protection ventures as well, inclusive of a startup that transforms seaweed into protective product.

“Today, on top of making great wines, which is the prerequisite, environmental protection, is probably one of the most important things that we’ve been focusing on for the last few years. The rest is, from one year to another, to make sure we do great vintages and make sure that people are happy. And these are truly the things I’m happiest about, because they’re more long-term than just the everyday anxiety of making sure you have the best wine in the world.”

Photo Credit: GABRIEL GUIBERT

Yet, Sereys de Rothschild does not seem anxious in any small way. He is jovial, smiling, and energetic, even though it is late on a Thursday evening in France. But then, he has mastered the two major skills every wine owner must learn. “I always say there are two things you have to understand in the wine business, and that is patience and humility. People who come to you and say, ‘I know everything there is to know and I can make your wine for you’ are hugely dangerous. Don’t keep them around you. You have to have people who question themselves all the time: why is this blending the right one? Could we do a better one? Making great wine is really about listening to the terroir, the climate, and the people who work with you. Patience is the other. Nothing in the wine business gets done quickly; it’s a 10-, 20-, 30-year waiting game. I’ve been lucky enough to be on the board since 1991, so I’ve experienced this as a spectator for 35 years. I know that our mission is to make the greatest wines in the world, but on the other hand, I also know that making those wines is very dependent on the climate, on things that I can’t control — that I’ll never be able to control, like weather disruption and global warming — so why try?”

It’s a good question, and a valid one. So, instead of stressing out, he focuses on the things that he does have the power to change: the state of mind of those who drink it. “You are directly responsible for the happiness of the people who are drinking [your wines. As such, Château Mouton Rothschild is nothing less than] “emotion in a bottle. Either you feel it, or you don’t. There are many who look at a Picasso and say, ‘I don’t understand anything,’ which is somewhat fine. You don’t have to understand Picasso to appreciate him. But for me, you have to feel something. Wine is very personal. It’s something that is due to who you are, your history, what you’ve experienced before in your life. To have no emotion in front of a great wine is very disturbing.”

This also happens to be the intention behind the brand’s iconic art bottles. Making Château Mouton Rothschild a place of art and beauty was Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s ambition. Since 1945, the labels for each vintage of Château Mouton Rothschild have been illustrated by an original artwork, adding year after year to the unique collection of contemporary art. The 2021 iteration was created by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota; before her, famous names have included the likes of the aforementioned Picasso, as well as Salvador Dalí, César, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Balthus, Jeff Koons, David Hockney, Olafur Eliasson, and Giuseppe Penone, who Sereys de Rothschild references now.

Photo Credit: Chateau Mouton Rothschild

“The artists all capture their own essences, their own way of seeing things, their own sensitivity to the product,” he explains, continuing, “Giuseppe Penone did a marvelous label with just a leaf and a hand. For him, wine is a leaf and a hand. I never asked him to explain his design, because it’s his understanding of what wine is. And to me, that is a very beautiful way of defining what wine is all about.”

Which, of course, goes back to emotion. It is his brother, Julien, who is responsible for the art program. “It’s a very open process. The only prerequisite we have is that the person we choose has to have a certain sensitivity to wine, to what we do, to agriculture. People always talk about us as a luxury product, which is, in a certain way, correct, but we are also an agricultural product, with all of its unsteadiness and both good and bad surprises. We want someone who gets that, not to have someone who just sticks his art on the label. If we feel that he or she doesn’t understand wine, we’re very uncomfortable, because this is a sensitive, emotional interaction for us.”

Which brings us full circle to why he cares so very much about every imbiber’s opinion. He wants everyone to have a magnificient experience when drinking his family’s wine.

“I don’t want to say the client is king, because it’s kind of a stupid expression, but don’t forget that I come from a family of theater people. And when you come from a family of theater people, you learn that the person who’s right is not the actor, is not the author, it’s the spectator. He’s the one who’s going to make sure that you’re still on stage in three months, 10 months, two years, and so on.”

Photo Credit: Mathieu Anglada Saison d’Or

He says the theater correlation makes sense, in that his father was the late, great French actor Jacques Sereys. His great-grandfather was a playwright who had his own theater. Even his namesake grandfather had a connection in that he translated English plays into French. He himself has an air of theater about him. “You have to make people dream,” he insists. “And if you can’t, then forget about it. It’s the same as a spectator that goes to the theater: he goes to dream. Wine is the same. You have to make [people] travel, they have to go somewhere just by opening a bottle and by drinking your wine.”

I can take this figuratively, as intended, or literally; either option works when it applies to the beauty of Pauillac, highlighted by all those lush, grape-filled vines, and the lush, powerful Bordeaux wines made here.

But regardless of what you’re drinking or where you’re drinking it, Sereys de Rothschild knows this much to be true: “Wine is a great luxury, because it makes you share many things with other people. In a world where people spend more and more time alone in front of a screen, wine is probably one of the only things that pulls you away from it and makes you share what you otherwise wouldn’t. And for me, that’s an absolutely fundamental part of life. It’s part of who we are.”

While wine itself might be a luxury, one could easily argue that not wine, but iconic wine, is true luxury. And what is Château Mouton Rothschild if not that?

Sereys de Rothschild answers this simply. “We are working to make the most prestigious, incredible product on the planet. And we know this: the world wouldn’t be the same if Mouton wasn’t in it,” he says, eyes twinkling, with a cheeky smile.

So yes, agreed, Mouton is a luxury. But the greatest luxury? Philippe Sereys de Rothschild looks at me innocently, and smiles. “To sleep, no?”

And as we now know, he sleeps very well.

Photo Credit: GABRIEL GUIBERT