It's the end of golden era

ELEGANT LIVING: BORDEAUX WINERY INVESTMENTS TURN SOUR FOR CHINESE INVESTORS

After over a decade of snapping up Bordeaux wine estates, buying into a dream of elegant living in France and good earnings in their home market, many Chinese investors are now selling up.

Capital controls back home, softening Asian demand for wine and the underestimated costs of running French estates have combined to push the once-enthusiastic buyers from China towards the exit.

Chateau Latour Laguens in 2009 was among the first Bordeaux vineyards to be bought by a Chinese company, convinced its wines would bring in handsome dividends on China's domestic market.

More than 200 other estates in southwestern France followed.

Owner Daisy Haiyan Cheng, heir to the Longhai International group, was originally full of ideas for the neo-Medieval building - a tasting room, a boutique, luxury guest rooms.

Today Chateau Latour, with its rising damp and its bat colony - the only occupants - is up for auction. The starting price, without the vines, is just €150,000 (about R2.8 million).

Other estates have recently lost their Chinese owners too.

In May, the French authorities confiscated nine chateaux acquired in the 2010s by Chinese magnate Naijie Qu, founder of the Haichang conglomerate, after he was convicted of corruption.