A SECRETIVE British property developer is the toast of Bordeaux after signing a multi-million-euro deal to buy one of the wine-growing region’s most prestigious chateaux.

Simon Halabi, who is among Britain’s richest men, moved for the 18th century Chateau Cantenac Brown in the celebrated Margaux territory at a time when Bordeaux is being shunned by most investors.

Vineyard owners hope that Mr Halabi’s arrival will signal a financial revival after a sharp drop in the price of their land.

A spokesman for the developer, whose fortune is estimated at €750 million (£517 million), said the Halabi family trust bought the property as a long-term investment. “He wants to invest in the chateau and the wine and to make it one of the best in Margaux,” he said.

In a statement to Sud Ouest, the regional French newspaper, Mr Halabi said he nourished a “personal passion for fine wines and for the Bordeaux region and its history”. He was born in Syria and owns the Naval and Military Club in Piccadilly, a £3 million house in Mayfair and Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire.

Mr Halabi is rumoured to have paid up to €50 million for the chateau to AXA, the insurance group, which had acquired it in 1989. The deal is the biggest in the region for a year, according to locals who have watched as the value of their vineyards has dwindled along with that of their wines.

A barrel of average local red is now worth only €800 — compared with more than €1,500 at the end of the 1990s. The price of a hectare of standard Bordeaux vines has slumped from almost €40,000 to €20,000.

Many of the region’s 14,000 vineyards have been put up for sale by their owners over the past two decades to avoid inheritance and wealth taxes.

But families who have tried to sell up since drinkers began turning their backs on Bordeaux in 2003 have been caught by the property price slump and the absence of buyers.

Anne-Valérie Deveze, who owns Demeures et Vignobles estate agents in Bordeaux, welcomed Mr Halabi’s purchase. “It could create a snowball effect,” she said . “The market is bottoming out and it is the right time to buy.”

Mr Halabi will be hoping to do better than the last Briton to own Chateau Cantenac Brown.

John Lewis Brown, a UK broker, bought the land in 1806, 52 years after the vineyard was created. Mr Brown, an artist and a renowned bon viveur, lost all his money and was declared bankrupt in 1843.

• THE quickest way to make a million pounds out of a wine estate is to start with two million (Jane McQuitty writes).

  AXA, the French insurer, must be over the moon — having bought rather more Bordeaux properties than was sensible in the past two decades — to offload one of the least tasty chateaux in its portfolio to Simon Halabi at such an inflated price.

  His choice, Cantenac-Brown, seems odd. Standards at this antiquated chateau improved greatly under AXA’s ownership but not to a level demanded by more discerning claret drinkers.

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