Joe Tsai, chairman and co-founder of China e-commerce pioneer Alibaba Group Holding, has joined the ranks of billionaires investing in prestigious French vineyards.
An avid wine collector, 60-year-old Tsai is part of a consortium that has acquired grape-growing parcels in Burgundy, according to people familiar with the matter. The partners include Oliver Weisberg, chief executive officer 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.
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 located in one of the most highly regarded areas of Burgundy.
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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 EUR220 million ($317.2 million) after patriarch Francois Pinault out-maneuvered Jack Ma, another Alibaba co-founder, to take control.
The Tsai consortium’s parcels are in appellations known as Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyeres-Chambertin and Ruchottes-Chambertin, a filing shows. Maps and photos produced by the official Vins de Bourgogne website indicate 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.
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Land registry data shows one parcel sold in 2021 for about EUR18 million. It’s not clear how much the consortium has invested in total.
A Canadian citizen born in Taiwan, Tsai has a net worth of about US$6.9 billion ($9.01 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 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, that features vineyards in the area where they invested. Tsai was also among business executives who were invited for lunch to 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 US$700,000-a-year job at the investment firm Investor AB in the late 1990s to join Alibaba for a monthly salary of US$50.
Photos: Bloomberg
