{"id":24140,"date":"2014-08-29T01:22:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T17:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=24140"},"modified":"2014-08-28T22:28:44","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T14:28:44","slug":"philippine-de-rothschild-ex-actress-who-became-grande-dame-of-bordeaux-wine-dies-at-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/08\/29\/philippine-de-rothschild-ex-actress-who-became-grande-dame-of-bordeaux-wine-dies-at-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippine de Rothschild, ex-actress who became grande dame of Bordeaux wine, dies at 80"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Philippine<\/a>
Philippine de Rothschild. Photo from fellowshipoftheminds.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PARIS\u2014Philippine\u00a0de Rothschild, an energetic and self-certain grande dame of Bordeaux wine who halted an acting career to run vineyards owned by the family dynasty, has died, her company said Sunday. She was 80.<\/p>\n

She died Friday in a Paris \u201cfrom the effects of a serious operation\u201d, winemaker Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA said in a statement, without specifying further.<\/p>\n

De Rothschild, who cracked a male-dominated wine industry to become company chairwoman and was known by many as simply \u201cThe Baroness,\u201d understood the ups and downs of bearing one of Europe\u2019s best-known family names: As a girl in Nazi-occupied France, she used her mother\u2019s maiden name; as a professional actress, she took a stage name.<\/p>\n

In a 1999 interview with French newspaper Liberation, she said: \u201cWhen your name is Rothschild, everyone thinks you had an easy childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hers\u2014during World War II\u2014was not. Her father, a scion of the fabulously wealthy Jewish banking family, fled to England to join Gen. Charles de Gaulle\u2019s expatriate administration. She stayed behind with her mother Elisabeth, who believed that her Catholic religion would spare her deportation.<\/p>\n

But in 1944, just two months before the Allies liberated Paris, the Nazis deported her mother to Ravensbrueck, Germany, where she died the next year. De Rothschild, in her comments to Liberation, recalled that she herself was spared deportation only because one German officer thought of his own daughter, who was about the same age, when he saw her. After the war, de Rothschild spent decades at the Comedie Francaise and elsewhere in the theatre circuit, using the stage name\u00a0Philippine\u00a0Pascal.<\/p>\n

When her father, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, died in 1988, she took control at the family business, Chateau Mouton Rothschild, later renaming it after him.<\/p>\n

While the Rothschild dynasty made its name first in finance, the family\u2019s London branch ran the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild winery in France for five generations. De Rothschild expressed pride to be the first woman to run it.<\/p>\n

Her father notably added innovation to an often staid industry by adorning drawings of artists like Picasso or Dali onto wine bottle labels. She continued the tradition: British artist Lucian Freud was commissioned to create the label for the 2006 edition of Chateau Mouton Rothschild\u2014a wine that has been known to fetch thousands of dollars per bottle over the years.<\/p>\n

In business, she used an actor\u2019s engaging demeanour. With a raspy voice, she was unafraid to speak her mind and was equally at ease in English and French. She had a penchant for thick earrings and heavy necklaces.<\/p>\n

Mouton Cadet, one of the company\u2019s wines, is recognized well beyond the rarefied world of connoisseurs. She maintained Baron Philippe de Rothschild\u2019s Opus One venture with Robert Mondavi, an alliance of New World vigour and Old World knowhow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had the choice, I would have likened\u00a0Philippine\u00a0de Rothschild to Champagne. She flames up, she\u2019s joyous, she\u2019s frothy,\u201d wrote Paris Match reporter Philippe Tesson in a 2007 profile. \u201cDestiny decided otherwise … That\u2019s how\u00a0Philippine\u00a0became a Bordeaux.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twice married, she is survived by two sons, a daughter and grandchildren. A funeral is planned Sept. 1 in southwestern Pauillac, said company CEO Hugues Lechanoine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS\u2014Philippine\u00a0de Rothschild, an energetic and self-certain grande dame of Bordeaux wine who halted an acting career to run vineyards owned …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":24142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-jamey-keaten","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}