Anthony George Pigé Leschallas dies aged 92

By Oliver Catchpole

Published: 29 January, 2026

Anthony George Pigé Leschallas – MD at Mentzendorff between 1972 and 1990 – has passed away aged 92.

Educated at Eton, Anthony spent most of his working life at Mentzendorff, joining the firm in 1958 at the age of 25 and becoming a director only two years later.

When he was 39, he became the youngest MD or senior partner appointed since the firm’s founder Ludwig Mentzendorff (who took on the role at 28).

Life at Mentzendorff at the beginning of Anthony’s tenue was often unhurried. The firm grew steadily, but not frenetically. Alan Montague-Dennis, director of prestige sales at Mentzendorff, said that Anthony built a culture “on confidence rather than urgency, on long relationships rather than transactions.”

He recalled Anthony’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.”

Over the period Leschallas worked at the importer it was near-synonymous with Bollinger, and he applied his marketing flair to the champagne with great success.

For example, it was him who began the association of Bollinger with sport – visibly, through ‘Bollinger tents’, and more subtly, turning it into the leading champagne for the racing world, with public relations with racecourses a key part of his role.

He had a talent for making Bollinger visible to the wider world. In the ‘70s, when the company stopped using heavy wooden cases to pack champagne, he took 100 empty boxes and spent the day driving around London offering them as seats to evening newspaper vendors.

He also secured Mentzendorff’s first supermarket order – with Tesco.

Anthony was tragically predeceased by his wife Marie-Louise and his eldest son Simon, who continued the good work of his father.

He is survived by three children, Marie-Louise, Joanna and William.

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