'A Greek in the Médoc', was the headline of a laudatory article in the Le Monde newspaper. What a storybook life this exceptional man had ! He was born in 1915 in Patras, in the Peloponnese. His father, who ran a hotel, made foreign language learning a top priority for his chidren, so they could fulfill the dream common to many Greek people : to go abroad..... and seek their fortune ! André fulfilled his father's expectations ; after studying literature in Grenoble, he left for the Far East where, in Burma, China, India and eventually in Pakistan, he made his fortune trading cereals on the import-export market. On his return to Europe, where he married a Frenchwoman, he purchased in 1958, Félix Potin, a company that had been founded in 1844 and owned 80 grocery shops. André turned this company into a large, modern distribution business with 1,600 supermarkets and prestigious real estate assets in Paris. It had been two years since Pierre and Bernard Ginestet had put Château Margaux up for sale, when André bought the estate in 1977, causing a shock wave around the wine world.

What ? A Greek in the Médoc ? People had not yet understood, though, that this man with the sing-song accent of his origins (he spoke six languages) and who liked to quote many phrases of Winston Churchill, had in fact fallen in love with his Château Margaux.

Unlike his compatriots, in finance or sea-faring, he loved land and stone. The ionic columns which ornate the peristyle of the château reminded him of his native Greece and, thanks to his formidable intellectual instinct, inspired him to a greater awareness of the scale of the work to be accomplished to put Margaux back at the top, in its rightful position.