Anthony Leschallas, Mentzendorff MD, dies aged 92
Anthony George Pigé Leschallas led Mentzendorff through a defining period and helped establish Bollinger as one of Britain’s most distinguished Champagne brands. His life and legacy are remembered here by Alan Montague-Dennis, director of prestige sales at Mentzendorff.
Anthony Leschallas joined Mentzendorff in 1958 at the age of twenty-five and became a director just two years later. At thirty-nine, he was the youngest managing director or senior partner appointed since Ludwig Mentzendorff, the firm’s founder, who himself had taken the role at the age of twenty-eight. Leschallas had previously been passed over for the position on the grounds that he was considered too young.
The succession was not uncontested. The choice lay between Leschallas and Michael Druitt, each representing a distinct vision for the future of the firm. Druitt was charismatic and unconventional, a stylish man-about-town who embodied what was then described as the new young establishment. Leschallas, by contrast, was more traditional and austere.
In several respects, Leschallas was an anomaly at Mentzendorff. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he had no military background, having been invalided out of the army because of childhood polio. He viewed military culture with a certain ironic distance, despite coming from an old Huguenot family – some of whom, with historical irony, were buried near the Honourable Artillery Company in London.
He was not, it was said, particularly fond of numbers. What he possessed instead was instinct: a powerful intuition for people, positioning and opportunity. His marketing flair was considerable. It was Leschallas who placed Bollinger firmly in the public eye through association with sport, most visibly through the creation of Bollinger tents. The tent at the Open Golf Tournament was among the earliest examples of branded sports hospitality, long before such sponsorship became commonplace.
During his years, Anthony introduced the Bollinger Gentleman Amateur Riders series, which culminated each year with the Bollinger Trophy Annual dinner for amateur jockeys. He knew every racecourse in the country and went racing weekly throughout the summer. Bollinger became the leading Champagne of the racecourse circuit, and public relations within the racing world formed a central element of his role. Since his retirement, he enthusiastically watched racing all the time from his armchair,
Almost his entire working life was spent at Mentzendorff during a period when the firm was, in effect, synonymous with Bollinger. The Bollinger family became his own, and the company and its wines were central to his life in a way that has rarely been repeated since. Earlier in his career, he had worked briefly at Findlater, Mackie, Todd, then at JH & J Brooke of Folkestone and Layton & Co, as well as in the vineyards and cellars of Champagne Lanson. The rewards were modest. For two months’ work, he later recalled, he was paid a single bottle of vintage port.
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Selling Bollinger itself was rarely difficult. Champagne was still rationed to the trade, which only enhanced its desirability. Customers who asked for ten cases were often offered three, reinforcing its status and scarcity. Mentzendorff at the time was a compact operation, consisting largely of directors and secretaries. The secretaries occupied offices on the ground floor; above them was the dining room, presided over by two sisters, Jeannie and Bumble Ogilvie-Wedderburn. Their lunches were legendary.
Leschallas himself had a particular talent for making the Bollinger name visible through small but memorable gestures. In the 1970s, when the company ceased packing Champagne in heavy wooden cases, he took the first hundred empty boxes, climbed into a lorry with the driver, and spent the day driving around London offering them as seats to evening newspaper vendors.
He was also responsible for securing Bollinger’s first supermarket order from Tesco. When he later returned to ask whether they wished to place a further order, he was told, with amused finality, that the directors had already drunk it all.
By modern standards, life at Mentzendorff in the 1950s and 1960s was unhurried. The firm had grown steadily, but it was far from frenetic. If the directors felt inclined, they might open an imperial pint of Bollinger instead of having morning coffee. Business etiquette was relaxed but precise. Montague-Dennis recalled Leschallas’s advice on joining the firm in 1991: take a client to lunch and do not discuss business; perhaps raise it gently over coffee, or as you are leaving, casually ask whether there was anything that could be sent. Anthony was tragically predeceased by his eldest son, Simon, who continued the good work of his father. You only had to meet Simon once, and you knew you had a friend for life.
Anthony encouraged a culture built on confidence rather than urgency, on long relationships rather than transactions. Bollinger was not simply sold. It was represented, performed, and embedded in the social fabric of the trade – carried forward by people who understood that reputation, presence, and restraint mattered as much as the wine itself. He worked closely with Madame Lily Bollinger and her nephew Christian Bizot, which strengthened the Mentzendorff-Bollinger relationship
Anthony was a former High Sheriff of Kent, a Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Distillers. He was married to Marie-Louise ( d.5.3.2018 ), together they had four children: Simon ( d.18.7.2019), Marie-Louise, Joanna and William.
The funeral of Anthony Leschallas will take place on Tuesday, 24 February at 11.30am at St Mary’s the Virgin Church, Hastings Road, Rolvenden, Cranbrook, Kent. TN17 4LS.
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