Thienpont Wine

The house

Camille Thienpont started a wine merchant business at Etikhove, in Flanders, in 1842, and the family supplied Belgium with wine from its cellars there. Early in the 20th century Georges Thienpont ran it and traveled to Bordeaux to buy. From Burgundy, Domaine d’Angerville, in Volnay, was sending its wine to the Thienponts in Belgium by April 1912.

Buying led to owning. Georges bought Château Troplong Mondot, in Saint-Émilion, in 1921. Bordeaux et ses vins, the directory of the Bordeaux trade begun by Charles Cocks and carried on by Édouard Féret, corrected its owner to “Géo Thienpont” in the edition of 1922. In 1924, at the urging of his wife Josephine, whom the 1923 vintage had charmed, he bought Vieux Château Certan, in Pomerol. The Depression made him sell Troplong Mondot in the 1930s. Certan stayed, and in 1957 he put it into a family company so that his children would hold it together.

His son Léon took it on at his death in 1962, and today Alexandre Thienpont and his son Guillaume run it for the whole family. Another branch settled at Château Puygueraud, in the Côtes de Francs, in 1946, and in Belgium Gérard Thienpont ran the merchant business.

In 1979 the family judged 1 hectare of Pomerol beside Certan too dear at 1 million francs. Gérard’s nephew Jacques Thienpont bought it himself, on loans from his father and from Gérard, and it became Le Pin. Jacques took over the merchant business at his uncle’s death and in 2010 bought L’If, in Saint-Émilion. Thienpont Wine deals mainly in Bordeaux and the rest of France, and it holds a Royal Warrant from the Belgian court. A new company, Thienpont Wine BV, was formed at Etikhove on December 1, 2025, with Jacques Thienpont and Fiona Morrison as its directors. Jacques oversees it today; his wife, Fiona Morrison, a Master of Wine, runs it, and his nephew Alexander De Raeymaeker is the latest of the family to trade in wine.

At a glance

Kind

Négociant

Based in

Etikhove, Belgium

Founded

1842, by Camille Thienpont

Owner

The Thienpont family, since 1842

Direction

Jacques Thienpont; Fiona Morrison MW, who runs the company

Châteaux

Of the family: Vieux Château Certan, since 1924; Puygueraud, since 1946; Le Pin, Jacques Thienpont, since 1979; L’If, Jacques Thienpont, since 2010

In the record

Domaine d’Angerville to Belgium, by April 1912; Troplong Mondot, under Géo Thienpont, 1922