“Mr. Expedia” invests again in Montalcino: Peter Kern, world top manager, expands “Il Palazzone”

“Mr. Expedia” is still investing in Montalcino: Peter Kern, vice chairman and ceo Expedia Group, the world leader in online travel (whose websites also include CarRentals.com, HomeAway, Hotels.com, Hotwire. com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Trivago and Vrbo), already the owner of “Il Palazzone”, the “jewel” winery of Brunello di Montalcino, with his wife Kirsten, the heart and core of the company together with his team, which already has 7 hectares under vine (at Due Porte, one of the highest points of the hill, and at Castelnuovo dell’Abate, a stone’s throw from the millenary Abbey of Sant’Antimo) has acquired the vineyards and the estate of the neighboring “Albatreti” (a winery with 5 hectares of vines, of which 1.7 of Brunello di Montalcino, 1 of Rosso and the rest of Sant’Antimo). An investment sought and wanted, WineNews apprehends, for a confidential amount (but for a hectare planted with Brunello today we speak of figures between 750,000 euros to 1 million euros, ed.), and which will go to boost the production of “Il Palazzone” (all wines will be released under this label, ed.), which now thus has a total of 12 vineyard hectares, of which just over 6 hectares are in Brunello, with the company’s goal of reaching an overall production, of all wines, of between 50,000 and 60,000 bottles per year. While the Albatreti estate will undergo an almost complete renovation. Yet another investment in the territory, then, by one of the world’s most important managers, Peter Kern, who, as previously reported by WineNews, had acquired “Il Palazzone” from another name of world renown such as Richard Parsons, former economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, and among the most famous American businessmen, formerly at the top of giants such as Time Warner and Citigroup, who had bought it in the early 2000s. With the Kern family, therefore, already a great wine collector, continuing to cultivate its “wine dream”, in Montalcino, one of the most prestigious territories in the world in terms of history, blazon, and established quality (where 16.1% of all transactions that took place in Italy between 2016 and 2022 materialized, according to a Cbre analysis), thanks to the work of historic wineries in the area, younger realities that have established themselves in relatively short themes, and important investments that arrived from abroad and from other sectors, like that of the Kern family. Lawyer Giulio Linguanti’s Studio Linguanti, which specializes in international business law and mergers & acquisitions, handled the deal.