Paris, February 13, 2023 – WINECHAIN, the marketplace for wiNeFTs (the official Winechain name for an NFT) that connects fine wine estates to new generations of wine enthusiasts all around the globe, has today announced that Motier Ventures, a family office controlled by the owners of Galeries Lafayette, has taken an equity stake in its capital. Motier Ventures has already invested in around 30 French Tech start-ups (business, fintech, web3, and creative technologies) since it was created 18 months ago.
This new announcement comes hot on the heels of the revelation at the end of January of the first fine wine estates to offer their wines to enthusiasts the world over on the first independent NFT platform designed specifically for wine producers. Starting in the second half of 2023, the Fleur de Miraval Champagne House founded by Brad Pitt, Egon Müller (Germany), Ceretto (Italy), Cos d’Estournel (France), Graham’s Port (Portugal), Château de Beaucastel (France), and numerous others, will be making available some of their finest bottles on the marketplace.
Nicolas Mendiharat, CEO Winechain commented:
“The Winechain platform turns on cutting edge technologies, and it’s essential that we work with the most talented, high-performing teams to enable us to offer prestigious estates access to the world of the blockchain, NFTs and the Metaverse. Alongside a group of international winemakers who began learning all about this as soon as the project was launched, we are pleased to now welcome a new partner who endorses a business model based on a disruptive vision of the world of fine wines – a world which, historically, has rarely been challenged.”
Guillaume Houzé, President and founder of Motier Ventures:
“Winechain offers our group a single investment vehicle for both our viticultural operations, as Motier Domaines, and our activities as tech-based business angels, via Motier Ventures. The respective destinies we are forging with Chateau Beauregard and Chateau Petit-Village on the one hand, and the crypto and Web3 ecosystem on the other, have at last come together. We are delighted to be able to unite earth and tech with Winechain, in creating with them a new distribution channel for Grand Crus.”
ABOUT WINECHAIN
WineChain is an NFT marketplace where the world’s top winemakers connect directly with a global community of wine lovers to give access to their authentic cellar experience. By pairing a wiNeFT – the official WineChain moniker for an NFT – to a physical bottle direct from the winery, we promise perfect provenance with minimal carbon footprint as you buy, sell, and store fine wines online. The initiative, launched in April 2022 by four experts – Xavier Garambois, former head of Amazon Europe, Marc Perrin of Château de Beaucastel, Guillaume Jourdan, CEO of VitaBella, and Nicolas Mendiharat, CEO of Winechain – is set to launch in early 2023 when the first wiNeFT will be dropped. www.winechain.co
