Château de Sours ex-owner buys Pomerol estate

British businessman Martin Krajewski, who a few months ago sold Château de Sours in Bordeaux to Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, has signed a deal to buy a wine estate in Pomerol.

Martin Krajewski sold Château de Sours to Alibaba founder Jack Ma earlier this year in a deal that ‘more than recouped’ Krajewski’s investment in the estate.

He has since used some of the proceeds to buy a 2.2 hectare estate in Pomerol, close to the village of Catusseau and in the vicinity of Château Nenin and Château La Pointe, with a view towards the church spire in Pomerol village.

The final sale should be completed in May 2016, but until then Krajewski declined to give the current name of the estate. He intends to re-name it Château Séraphine once fully acquired.

He did not give a purchase price. One hectare of vineyard in Pomerol costs 1.1m euros on average, according to 2015 figures from French land agency SAFER.

Krajewski said an architect has started drawing up plans for a new winery and house for the Pomerol property. ‘The opportunity to have an estate in both St-Emilion and Pomerol is really something exceptional and something that I could have only dreamt about when first moving to Bordeaux in 2004,’ Krajewski told Decanter.com.

Krajewski is still the owner of Clos Cantenac in St-Emilion, which he bought in 2006 at 1.6 hectares and has now enlarged to six hectares. Famed for his rosé wines at Chateau de Sours, he has released Exuberance de Clos Cantenac Rosé from his St-Emilion vines, a highly unusual move for the red wine area (bottled AOC Bordeaux Rosé).

The former director of a headhunting firm in the City of London also owns Aristea Wines in Constantia, South Africa and has recently invested in a private distillery in Norway called Oslo Handverksdestilleri (OHD).