The Decanter interview: Mouton Rothschild family: the new generation

Magazine: November 2017 Issue

After earlier careers in other fields, Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s three grandchildren have taken up roles in the family business. Jane Anson discovers how they plan to honour such a distinguished heritage...

La Grande Piece at Mouton Rothschild, with its blue and red tiled floor, 17th and 18th century chairs and artworks including Brancusi’s Bird in Space sculpture, looks almost exactly as it did in a photo shoot for Vogue in 1963.

It has been left more or less untouched since Baron Philippe and his second wife, Baroness Pauline (described as a legendary tastemaker by Architectural Digest in 1977) carefully selected the pieces. Much of the rest of their collection is on display downstairs in the Museum of Wine in Art, but these are the private quarters.

Today, Baron Philippe’s grandson Philippe Sereys de Rothschild has chosen this room for our meeting, almost two years to the day since we first discussed his appointment as chairman of the supervisory board for the legendary Mouton Rothschild family estates.

Scroll down to see Jane’s picks of the Rothschild portfolio for drinking now

From that first meeting, on a beautifully sunny day in June 2015, I remember a clear impression forming of the serious challenge ahead in taking over from his mother, Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, who died less than a year earlier and left in her wake an indelible imprint on every part of her estate.

Two years on and Sereys de Rothschild is warm, expansive, relaxed. He seems fully grown into his role as the head of the board, working alongside his elder sister, Camille Sereys de Rothschild, and younger brother, Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild.