default archive page

Jean-Guillaume Prats

A native of the Médoc region, Jean-Guillaume has been president and CEO of Cos d’Estournel for 14 years. During this time, he created Cos Blanc from scratch, and also brought innovation to the estate, notably with the creation of the new vat room. Then, Jean-Guillaume Prats left Bordeaux and for more than 5 years, he was president of LVMH wines worldwide: 17 estates in total. An extraordinary adventure during which he relaunched Cheval des Andes in Argentina and created Ao Yun in China, then among others Chandon in India and China and Te Wahi in Central Otago. Later, Jean-Guillaume Prats was President of Domaines Baron de Rothschild (Lafite).

Today, Jean-Guillaume Prats has joined forces with Stéphane Courbit, former President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni to buy Château d’Estoublon in Provence. The estate gathers 200 hectares, of which 20 are planted with vines and 120 with olive trees. The estate produces red, rosé and white wines under the Baux-de-Provence appellation. The team has also created a Provençal rosé called Roseblood and they produce a top-of-the-range olive oil (the only oil listed as part of the Comité Colbert).

In parallel, Jean-Guillaume Prats remains in Bordeaux alongside Jean-Hubert Delon, owner of Domaines Delon: Châteaux Léoville Las Cases, Potensac and Nénin. His appointment as Vice-President of Domaines Delon accompanies the creation of the new vat room and cellar overlooking the great enclosure of Las Cases in Saint-Julien.

Andy Barr

Andy Barr has served as the U.S. Congressman for Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District since January of 2013. Congressman Barr is a senior Member of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) and the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC). In 2020, Congressman Barr was also appointed to the House China Task Force, which was established to position the United States to confront the military, technological, economic and political threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Congressman Barr is a strong leader who upholds the Constitution and is a champion of conservative values.

As the lead Republican on the HFSC Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy (NSIDMP), Congressman Barr is taking an active role in promoting policies that reverse historic levels inflation. To reduce skyrocketing energy prices, Congressman Barr has led the opposition against government financial regulators politicizing access to capital to choke off investments in American energy companies. In early 2021, Congressman Barr also publicly called for the normalization of monetary policies at the Federal Reserve.

On the HFAC, Congressman Barr sits on the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia and Nonproliferation (APCAN). As a member of APCAN and CTF, Congressman Barr is currently championing the Chinese Military and Surveillance Company Sanctions Act of 2021, legislation he crafted targeting
sanctions against CCP military and surveillance companies. Congressman Barr was also instrumental in strengthening ties between the United States and Taiwan by leading a successful, bipartisan push in Congress to deliver excess COVID-19 vaccines from the United States to Taiwan during the height of the pandemic on the island in June of 2021.

Throughout his time in Congress, Congressman Barr has been a staunch advocate for veterans. In the 116th Congress, Congressman Barr served on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In 2019, he introduced and helped enact into law amendments to the Edith Nourse Rogers Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Scholarship as part of the Forever GI Bill. These amendments lowered the credit hour requirement in the scholarship that made it more accessible to student veterans across the country. Congressman Barr also worked to address the crisis of veteran suicide, successfully expanding equine assisted therapy (EAT) as an innovative treatment for veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other invisible wounds of war. Barr’s efforts culminated in historic EAT provisions being included in the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act.

Congressman Barr is also focused on strengthening Kentucky’s signature bourbon, equine, coal, agriculture and manufacturing industries, and serves as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Horse and Bourbon Caucuses. In 2020, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, led by Congressman Barr was signed into law by President Trump. This represented the most transformational and consequential reform of the thoroughbred horseracing industry since enactment of the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 and solidifies the industry for decades to come. Congressman Barr secured the passage of
legislation that made permanent the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA) in December of 2020, which was set to expire at year-end. This legislation lowers the Federal Excise Tax (FET) rates for distillers and includes Congressman Barr’s AGED Distilled Spirits Act (ADSA), which is a huge boost for the Kentucky bourbon industry.

Congressman Barr graduated from Lexington's Henry Clay High School in 1992, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1996, and received his law degree from the University of Kentucky in 2001.

Additionally, Congressman Barr is a 2007 graduate of Leadership Lexington and has served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden and President of Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky.

He and his late wife, Carol, have two daughters, Eleanor and Mary Clay.

https://barr.house.gov/press-releases?ID=3A5BE4B6-42AE-4AD9-A76D-7E9A2CB50E87

Jane Anson

Jane Anson has lived in Bordeaux since 2003 and is founder of janeanson.com, the site that she launched in October 2021 after leaving Decanter magazine, where she was longtime Bordeaux correspondent. Recipient of the ISWC 2023 Wine Communicator Trophy, Jane is author of Inside Bordeaux (called a ‘category buster’ by Wine Anorak and ‘the Bordeaux bible’ by Le Figaro), Wine Revolution (Quarto 2017), The Club of Nine (Katz Publishing 2016) Angélus (Editions de la Martiniere, 2016) and Bordeaux Legends, a history of the 1855 First Growth wines (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2013, reissued as an NFT ebook in June 2022), as well as co-author or translator of over a dozen wine and travel books. She has won several awards for her writing, including Louis Roederer Wine Online Communicator of the Year 2020, and Born Digital Best Editorial 2020. She is a graduate of the DUAD tasting diploma with the Bordeaux Institute of Oenology, an accredited wine teacher at the Bordeaux Ecole du Vin and co-founder of the Bordeaux Mentor Week (inaugural edition September 2022) aimed at opening up diversity and access in the world of wine.

 

Inside Bordeaux by Jane Anson

Jane Anson’s fascinating and beautiful book, Inside Bordeaux will be available for sale and Jane will be signing copies after the Master Class on May 20th. Here is the link to purchase https://www.sothebyswine.com/ny/shop/inside-bordeaux

Jamie Ritchie

Auctioneer

Jamie Ritchie

Jamie Ritchie recently left his role as Worldwide Chairman of Sotheby’s Wines & Spirits, having been with Sotheby’s for more than 32 years. This July, he will be joining an innovative new business in the wine and spirits world.

Jamie joined Sotheby’s in London in 1990 and was responsible for setting-up Sotheby’s wine auctions in New York in 1994, Hong Kong in 2009 and France in 2021, as well as Sotheby’s Spirits category in 2019. In 2010, Mr. Ritchie launched Sotheby’s Wine, a retail store and online wine business, located at their flagship headquarters in New York, with a second location in the Sotheby’s gallery in Hong Kong. A range of Sotheby’s Own Label wines was introduced in 2019. Mr. Ritchie also initiated Sotheby’s new auction partnerships with the Hospices de Beaune (2021), The Worshipful Company of Distiller’s (2021) and the Napa Valley Vintners (2022).  Under his leadership, Sotheby’s worldwide wine & spirits auction business achieved record sales of $132 million in 2021.

Mr. Ritchie is one of the world’s leading wine auctioneers, having presided over many extraordinary and record-breaking Single Owner auctions and holds the records for selling the most expensive bottles of wine and spirits: 1 bottle of Romanée-Conti 1945 for $558,000 in 2018; and 1 bottle of The Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Year Old 1926 for $1.9 million in 2019.  Mr. Ritchie is a respected authority on the wine and spirits market and has been regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, Bloomberg and Wine Spectator.