Jean-Guillaume Prats’ professional life has changed enormously since February 1 last year. On that Friday he walked out of Château Cos d’Estournel in St-Estèphe and, the following week, started his new job at the Paris headquarters of LVMH’s wine interests. As the public face of Cos, sold to Swiss businessman Michel Reybier in 2000 by his father Bruno, Prats was no stranger to airports and long-haul flights. But now, instead of the route between Bordeaux and winemaker dinners in Asia, his travel schedule takes him to virtually all corners of the wine world, as well as frequent trips to London, where his boss Christophe Navarre is based.
As president and CEO of Estates and Wines, the Moët Hennessy wine division, Prats’ remit is personally to look after the fortunes of all LVMH’s non-French wine interests: Cloudy Bay in New Zealand; Cape Mentelle and Domaine Chandon in Australia; Domaine Chandon and Newton in California; Domaine Chandon in Brazil; Domaine Chandon, Terrazas de los Andes and Cheval des Andes in Argentina; Numanthia in Toro in northern Spain (a sparkling wine project in Cava country was abandoned long ago); Domaine Chandon in India; Domaine Chandon and a new red wine project in China. The major problem of this new role is that there is never a moment of the day or night when his white iPhone lies silent. But, during the three days I spent with him recently in China, he claimed that his current travel schedule is less tiring than the old one of having to perform over multiple vintages of Cos until late into the night.
We spent quite a bit of the nearly eight hours we drove in the Himalayan foothills discussing travel, both of us being travel agents manqués. His father, now a Swiss resident and keen sailor, apparently bulk buys EasyJet tickets between Geneva and Alicante. Prats, meanwhile, showed a keen interest in the Ryanair Stansted-Bergerac link that I drew to his attention. He never knows exactly when he might be needed for meetings in London and Paris, even though he and his family are for the time being still based in Bordeaux. He admits that 80 per cent of his assistant’s time is spent organising, and reorganising, his schedule.