At the beginning of the adventure that led her to create Rouge aux Lèvres, a digital medium specialising in wines and spirits, the label of “influencer” that was immediately attached to the skin of Margot Ducancel, a hyperactive thirty-something, made some people laugh. Often out of jealousy, sometimes out of ignorance, others pigeonholed her, without subtlety and in a terribly misogynistic way, as a “token blonde who talks loudly to say nothing”. Some 500 members and almost 45,000 followers later, this woman from the Northern region of France, who worked for a time for Estate & Wines (the foreign wine arm of the LVMH group) and has been an occasional columnist for our magazine En Magnum since 2016, has transformed her passion into a start-up with a bright future. She has succeeded in establishing herself in the traditional world of media – how can anyone still think that digital players are not media? – by diversifying her activities. Launching a tasting club exclusively for women, organising gastronomic cruises, running live shops in partnership with a number of major retailers, creating podcasts – the young woman used the confinement of 2020 as a springboard to launch herself fully into her new life as an entrepreneur. Since then, she has also become the godmother of the historic Hachette guide, which says a lot about her mission to prescribe and her role as a communications accelerator. It’s a new role (for a woman who is always dressed in colourful clothes) that she has taken on with brio, well aware of the challenges facing a wine-conscious France faced with a spectacular fall in consumption. Given the efforts made by this tireless ambassador in a world still shy of digital communication, we couldn’t reasonably overlook her unfailing commitment to promoting the living civilisation of wine, with her characteristic spontaneity and naturalness. Margot is a force to be reckoned with, because she’s an outspoken opinionator who intelligently allows her followers to disagree with her, and because she works tirelessly to develop her skills, often in the field and in the vineyards. At Bettane+Desseauve, we listen to her.
Our geniuses, our top honours The following men and women have given meaning to the concerns and challenges facing the world of wine. Bringing to life terroirs that illustrate the diversity of fine viticulture, devising tools to assess the sustainability of soils, imagining creation, thinking about quality, anticipating oenology, transforming know-how into a universal style, making restaurants the allies of wines, passing on their passion: each of them is a “genius of the year”.
📷 Rouge aux lèvres
