Philippine Mathilde Camille, Baroness de Rothschild (22 November 1933 – 23 August 2014) was the owner of the French winery
Château Mouton Rothschild
Château Mouton Rothschild is a wine estate located in the village of Pauillac in the Médoc region, 50 km (30 mi) north-west of the city of Bordeaux, France. Originally known as ''Château Brane-Mouton'', its red wine was renamed by ...
. She acted under the stage name Philippine Pascal (imprinting on her paternal grandfather
Henri de Rothschild
Henri James Nathaniel Charles, Baron de Rothschild (26 July 1872 – 12 October 1947) was a French playwright who wrote under the pen names André Pascal, Charles des Fontaines, and P.-L. Naveau. He was also qualified as a physician (although he ...
who also used the last name Pascal to write plays
). She was the only daughter of the vintner
Baron Philippe de Rothschild, a member of the
Rothschild banking dynasty.
Biography
Rothschild was born in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
. At the time of her birth, her mother,
Elisabeth Pelletier de Chambure, a French Catholic aristocrat, was not married to her father Philippe de Rothschild, but instead married to
Jonkheer
(female equivalent: ; french: Écuyer; en, Squire) is an honorific in the Low Countries denoting the lowest rank within the nobility. In the Netherlands, this in general concerns a prefix used by the untitled nobility. In Belgium, this is the ...
Marc de Becker-Rémy, a Belgian nobleman. After a legal skirmish and the Jonkheer's threats to kidnap his wife's child, the Becker-Rémys divorced in 1934. Shortly afterwards, Rothschild's mother and father eventually married that same year in Paris. By 1939, Philippe de Rothschild separated from Elisabeth, who reverted to using her maiden name.
Rothschild had one brother, Charles Henri de Rothschild, who was born in 1938 and died that same year.
When Philippine de Rothschild was ten years old, she witnessed the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
arrest her mother, who later died at
Ravensbrück concentration camp, the only known member of the Rothschild family to die during
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
. The two Gestapo officers fought over taking Philippine along with her mother, but one officer argued that he had a daughter the same age back home, so they left her alone.
In 1958, she graduated from the Paris Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique and acted in La Comédie Française with
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...
. She played one of the leading roles in ''
Harold and Maude'' with
Madeleine Renaud between 1973 and 1980, and worked with the compagnie Renaud-Barrault until 1988.
She was made an Officier of the
Légion d'Honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
in 2007, and in 2013 was given a lifetime achievement award by the
Institute of Masters of Wine
An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body.
In some countries, institutes can ...
.
She died on 23 August 2014 from "complications from surgery".
Work in the wine business
Rothschild entered the board of directors of Château Mouton Rothschild's holding company in November 1971.
In 1985, she introduced the Californian
Opus One (Mondavi-Rothschild collaboration) to the French market, a daring move at the time. When Philippe died in 1988, Philippine inherited three estates in
Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...
:
Château Mouton Rothschild
Château Mouton Rothschild is a wine estate located in the village of Pauillac in the Médoc region, 50 km (30 mi) north-west of the city of Bordeaux, France. Originally known as ''Château Brane-Mouton'', its red wine was renamed by ...
(bought by her great-great grandfather
Nathaniel de Rothschild
Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812–1870), was a businessman, banker and winemaker. He established the Château Mouton Rothschild.
Biography
Early life
Nathaniel de Rothschild was born on 2 July 1812 in London. He was the fourth child of Natha ...
in 1853),
Château d'Armailhac, and
Château Clerc Milon
Château Clerc Milon is a winery in the Pauillac appellation of the Bordeaux region of France. The wine produced here was classified as one of eighteen ''Cinquièmes Crus'' (Fifth Growths) in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855.
C ...
. She also became chairwoman and majority owner of Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A. She became the first woman in five generations to lead the family's wine business.
In 1990, she asked the artist Francis Bacon to design the label of the Château Mouton Rothschild wine bottles. She introduced a second wine from the Château, Le Petit Mouton, and increased the production of Mouton Cadet. In 2004, she asked
Prince Charles to design the bottles' label.
During the 1990s, wine critics were very negative towards the quality of Mouton.
She banned the 1993 Château Mouton Rothschild from exports in the USA because the label showed the drawing of a nude young woman drawn by
Balthus (and was promoted with the explanation "The fragile and mysterious girl . . . seems to hint at some secret promise of undiscovered pleasure, a pleasure to be shared"), a drawing that led 300 wine producers to sign a petition against the dsitribution of the bottle.
At the time of her father's death, the company sold 1.3 million cases of wine a year. By 2000, sales had almost doubled to 2.1 million cases. In 1999, sales amounted to around $155 million (approximately $ million in dollars).
Her wine holdings included Château Mouton Rothschild, Château d'Armailhac, Château Clerc Milon, Domaine de Lambert, Baron Arques, Baron Philippe de Rothschild,
Mouton Cadet Mouton Cadet is the brand name of a popular range of modestly priced, generic Bordeaux wines, considered Bordeaux's most successful brand.winepros.com.au. Created by Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Mouton Cadet wine is produced through the assembly o ...
,
Opus One and Viña Almaviva (in Chile
).
Marriages
Rothschild was married to:
*Jacques Noël Sereys (born 1928), a French theatre director and actor, whom she wed on 4 March 1961 and divorced 25 October 1999.
They have a daughter and a son:
**Camille Sereys de Rothschild (born 1961)
**Philippe Sereys de Rothschild (born 1963)
*
Jean-Pierre de Beaumarchais
Jean-Pierre Delarüe Caron de Beaumarchais (8 December 1944, Rome) is a French bibliographer, a descendant in the female line of Pierre Beaumarchais (whose family took on the name by decree of April 25, 1853).
Biography
A former student of the à ...
(born 1944), a bibliographer and scholar, who is a relative of 18th-century playwright
Pierre Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (; 24 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, ...
.
[Per-Henrik Mansson, "The Mistress of Mouton", '']The Wine Spectator
''Wine Spectator'' is an American lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine and wine culture, and gives out ratings to certain types of wine. It publishes 15 issues per year with content that includes news, articles, profiles, and general entertai ...
'', 15 December 2000 They have one son:
**Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild
[ ] (born 1971)
Filmography
Bibliography
*
References
External links
Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A.*
*
Charlie Rose intervie
#11150
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothschild, Philippine De
1933 births
2014 deaths
French winemakers
Philippine de Rothschild Philippine Mathilde Camille, Baroness de Rothschild (22 November 1933 – 23 August 2014) was the owner of the French winery Château Mouton Rothschild. She acted under the stage name Philippine Pascal (imprinting on her paternal grandfather Henri d ...
French baronesses
French people of German-Jewish descent
Officiers of the Légion d'honneur