Hermès: Handbag Heritage Under Assault

Renaud Momméja has two vivid memories of October 2010. One is the excellent harvest at his Bordeaux estate, Château Fourcas Hosten, in the village of Listrac-Médoc. "It was an exceptional millésime," he says, over a plate of lobster and braised leeks in the château dining room. Outside the windows, rolling vineyards of merlot grapes bask in the early-spring sunshine.

Momméja's second recollection is of the moment, on Oct. 23, three days after the harvest ended, when he learned that French tycoon Bernard Arnault had laid siege to his family's company, Paris luxury house Hermès International. "Everyone in the family remembers where we were at that moment," he says as a butler pours glasses of a deep-red 2004 Fourcas Hosten Bourgeois Supérieur. In Momméja's case, he was driving to a Saturday-afternoon rugby game in Toulouse when the news came over the car radio that Arnault had taken a big stake in the company. "We were all in shock."