Latour’s Pinault hires Araujo consultant to bolster communications

Chateau Latour owner Francois Pinault has hired a family member from his newly-acquired Araujo Estate to improve his communications strategy.

Jamie Araujo (pictured), the daughter of Bart and Daphne Araujo, who sold their high-end Napa winery to Francois Pinault’s Artemis group earlier this year, began her role this month.

She is auditing the communications strategy at all four of Pinault’s wine properties, also including Chateau Grillet in the Rhone and Domaine d’Eugénie in Burgundy.

Araujo founded wine marketing consultancy Terravina out of Paris in 2004, as France’s wine industry sought answers to New World competition in key export markets.

‘Often, high-end estates can be overwhelmed by demands from press and collectors, and don’t have time to sit back and look at the overview of how best to organise things,’ Araujo told decanter.com. ‘My role is to bring an external eye.’

She added, ‘the number of requests means it is possible to miss things if there is not a careful system in place’. She said it was too early to say if one strategy could be applied across all four estates. ‘These are four very different properties, with different cultures.’

Araujo, who studied oenology in Bordeaux, took an MBA at INSEAD business school ans has also worked for Moet Hennessy, will also handle private clients at her parents’ old winery in Napa. It sells 50% of its wines direct.

A spokesperson for Latour confirmed that Araujo ‘will advise us through Terravina on some marketing and communication topics’.

Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux