Vienna – Baron Elie Robert de Rothschild, who helped France’s renowned Rothschild winemaking and banking dynasty recover from the ravages of World War II, died Monday of a heart attack at his Austrian hunting lodge. He was 90.
The family’s prestigious Chateau Lafite-Rothschild winery, for whom Elie de Rothschild began working in 1946 after serving as an Allied soldier during World War II, credits him with at least two of the best and most memorable postwar Bordeaux vintages: 1947 and 1949.
Rothschild, the vineyard says on its website, , supervised the effort to restore the domain’s vineyards and buildings and overhauled the way the holdings were administered.
“He took practical steps, like adding a herd of dairy cows in the 1950s in order to use the prairies below the chateau as organic fertilizer supply,” Chateau Lafite-Rothschild said.
Rothschild became a prominent taster at wine events in London and helped found the Bordeaux Wine Guild in 1950 before passing management responsibilities to a nephew in the 1970s.
Born May 29, 1917, Rothschild was captured by the Germans near the border with Belgium. He wound up at Lübeck, one of the Nazis’ POW camps.
There, he was reunited with a brother, Alain, and although they were Jews, they were treated as captured officers and avoided execution.
He held a 25 percent stake in the Rothschild banking empire and oversaw the conversion of the former Paris-Lyon-Marseille railway into a travel company of hotels and restaurants.
