Quebec billionaire Stéphan Crétier, whose company Garda World received $300 million in support from the Legault government, has just paid $56 million to get his hands on a prestigious winery in California.
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SCW Fund Corp., a Delaware company controlled by Mr. Crétier, acquired Vine Cliff Winery on Aug. 1, according to official documents seen by Le Journal. The information was first published by the trade magazine Wine Business.
Historic property
According to Wine Spectator magazine, Vine Cliff is one of the historic properties in the famous Napa Valley. Its origins date back to 1871, but the property remained abandoned for most of the 20th century. It was purchased in 1985 by Nell and Chuck Sweeney, a couple who made a fortune in the hotel business and recently divorced.
Photo from Vine Cliff Winery website
The more than 40-hectare property includes a winery capable of producing 180,000 liters of wine per year, two cellars, a pond, a house and a nine-hectare vineyard.
The purchase price of $42.1 million (CAD$56 million) only covers the real estate portion and not the business itself, Wine Business states.
Stéphan Crétier declined the Journal’s interview request on Wednesday.
Stéphan Crétier Photo from the HEC Montréal website
“It should be noted that the purchase of the vineyard is a personal transaction, carried out with personal funds, and that it has no connection with the operations or activities of Garda World,” the Montreal company stressed in a statement.
A devastating fire
Vine Cliff is Mr. Crétier’s second wine acquisition. In 2017, he and his wife Stéphany Maillery bought the Roy Estate, a ten-minute drive from Vine Cliff.
Stéphany Maillery and Stéphan Crétier in 2018. The couple donated more than $1 million to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photo from MMFA website
A few hours after the transaction, four of the five buildings in the Roy Estate were engulfed by the flames of a forest fire.
The new owners recently built a luxurious 1,500 square foot residence on the property that also serves as a tasting pavilion.
The luxurious Roy Estate residence was built after the 2017 fire. Photo from Roy Estate website
“It happened by chance”
“I never woke up and said I wanted to own a winery. It happened by chance. You meet someone at dinner in Venice and start talking about wine. And that person becomes a very close friend and she was looking for a “guardian” for the property,” Mr. Crétier told Toronto magazine Dolce last year.
The entrepreneur, who has lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for several years, founded Garda in 1995. In August 2022, the Ministry of Economy, led by Pierre Fitzgibbon, invested $300 million in Garda to help the company take over the American to help the Arca corporation.
Sesami, the Garda subsidiary into which Arca was integrated, employs fewer than 100 people in Quebec, according to the company register. Most of Sesami’s employees and managers are based in Texas and Sweden.
Into the red
In 2022, Garda’s Stéphan Crétier received compensation of $6.68 million, which includes a performance bonus of $4 million.
In its most recent fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, the company suffered a loss of more than $461 million on revenue rising 29% to $5.27 billion.
In the first six months of the current financial year, Garda recorded a net loss of $67.5 million on revenue of $2.88 billion, an increase of 16%.
Garda World employs more than 132,000 people in 43 countries.
– In collaboration with Philippe Langlois, Agence QMI
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