Domaine
1297
Restaurants · Bars · Beach Clubs · Vineyards · Spirits · The Long Table
The number is an instruction
In 1297, François Grimaldi took the Rock of Monaco — a small, deliberate act that began a line unbroken for more than seven centuries. 1297 takes the year as signature and as standard: anything that carries the name must be able to exist, without translation, in Monaco itself.
The Fund is the dining instrument of that standard. Its signature room opens on ground held by the Grimaldi family for seven hundred years — ten minutes by boat from the Rock, provenance no other table on earth can claim; its horizon is the short list of cities Monaco’s families already move between — London, Paris, and few others. The full case for the platform is made in 1297 — A Monograph, privately circulated and held in the data room.
- Timeless elegance — rooms built, not decorated; correct in thirty years as on opening night
- Exclusivity & privacy — discretion designed into the plan, never announced in the marketing
- Sustainability with sophistication — net-zero in operation, following Monaco’s own lead
- Uncompromising quality — nothing outsourced that can compromise the standard
- Global prestige — a small number of rooms, known by name, scarce by design
Everything that reaches the table
Domaine 1297 backs the whole life of the table: the room, the bar, the cellar and the vineyard — one standard, carried by the world’s most singular chefs, wherever they choose to cook.
The chef is sovereign. Sovereignty is the first of the 1297 values, and it is extended to the talent. The chef chooses the city, the room, the concept and the menu. 1297 does not prescribe; it selects — against the Monaco Test — and then backs the choice with capital, operations and patience. Most great chefs never own their room. Here, they do.
The name on the door is the chef’s. The hallmark is ours. 1297 does not brand its rooms; it hallmarks them — the way great silver carries a small, permanent mark of its standard. The mark lives in the details: the cellar stamp, the match striker, the last page of the menu. Guests learn to look for it. Chefs never have to explain it.
The 1297 properties are options, not obligations. Grimaldi Gardens, Aurelia and La Trémoille offer rooms with an audience built in — offered to the Fund’s chefs on first refusal, taken only when the chef wants the room. The platform is a privilege of the family, never a cage. And the buildings themselves belong to separate 1297 vehicles: the Domaine invests in what happens at the table, never in the real estate.
- Led by Alexandre Taisne, Chief Executive — the former CEO of the Michelin Guide, running the Domaine itself: first-name relationships across the leading kitchens, before opportunities reach the market
- Six arms, one standard: restaurants, the 1297 bars, beach clubs, vineyards and the Cellar, and the house spirits & brews — bound together by The Long Table, the membership that runs through every room
- Each arm is its own sub-fund: invest in the Domaine entire, or choose the compartments you want
- Dual return engine: operating cash flow from rooms and bars, plus appreciation of acclaimed restaurants, brands, vineyards and cellared wine
- Institutional governance, reporting and food-safety standards behind every door
The numbers behind the tables
Dining has become the defining luxury experience. The fine-dining segment is growing ahead of the wider market, and the best tables are booked out months ahead — scarcity conventional hospitality cannot manufacture.
Yet most hotel dining is an afterthought, and most independent restaurants are under-capitalised. A fund that pairs the finest chefs with the finest addresses — and owns the result — occupies ground with little competition.
Rooms, bars, cellars, vineyards
| Arm | What it is |
|---|---|
| 1297 Restaurants The great dining cities |
Chef-led rooms wherever the chef chooses to cook — the chef’s name on the door, the hallmark in the details, the Fund behind the build. |
| 1297 Bars Twelve seats · Ninety-seven bottles |
A bar format no one else can mint: twelve seats at the counter, ninety-seven bottles on the wall, one keeper choosing every one of them — every bar is the number itself, built. No standing room. No list beyond the wall. The bar is the Fund’s scout: a 1297 bar opens in a city before a restaurant does. |
| 1297 Beach Clubs The coasts that meet the standard |
Day-to-night clubs on the water, in the line of the first at Grimaldi Gardens — few, seasonal, and unashamedly the most profitable doors on any coast. Each carries a 1297 bar at its heart and the estate’s wine in its cellar. |
| 1297 Vineyards & The Cellar The Riviera arc & beyond |
Small, exceptional estates — Provence, Liguria, Piedmont, a grower’s parcel in Champagne — farmed to the net-zero standard. The Cellar is an appreciating reserve: it supplies every room and bar, and offers to Long Table members what never reaches the market. |
| 1297 Spirits & Brews The still · The botanicals · The brewhouse |
The house marques, made not licensed: a 1297 single malt laid down in cask — stock that appreciates the way the Cellar does; a 1297 gin whose botanicals are cut from the Grimaldi Gardens park; a 1297 beer brewed for the coast. Made with the finest independent distillers and brewers — partners on the chef framework, never contractors. Poured across every room, sold far beyond them. |
| The 1297 Addresses The stage — never the asset |
Grimaldi Gardens, Aurelia and La Trémoille: rooms with an audience built in, held for the Fund’s chefs on first refusal. The buildings belong to separate 1297 vehicles — the Domaine invests in the businesses at the table, never in the real estate. |
Opened with discipline
Each arm is a compartment of the umbrella — a sub-fund in its own right. Investors commit to the Domaine entire, allocated as below, or choose the compartments they want. The founding seats at The Long Table go first to those who take the whole table.
| Sub-fund | Mandate |
|---|---|
| Restaurants — 40% | Chef-led rooms in the great dining cities, and destination rooms within 1297 properties where the chef wants them. Openings and acquisitions of the acclaimed. |
| Bars — 15% | Twelve seats, ninety-seven bottles: small, fast to open, the highest-margin doors in the estate — and the scouts for every new city. |
| Beach clubs — 15% | The coast: few, seasonal, ferociously cash-generative — each one a stage for the whole estate, from the kitchen to the Cellar. |
| Vineyards & Cellar — 15% | Estates and cellared stock: farming assets that appreciate, supply the network, and anchor the standard in the ground itself. |
| Spirits & Brews — 10% | The house marques, made with partner distillers and brewers signed like chefs: whisky laid down in cask, gin from the park’s botanicals, beer for the coast. Cask stock appreciates; cases sell from day one. |
| Incubation — 5% | Residencies, next-generation chefs and new formats proven inside the estate before they earn a door of their own. |
Opening rules
- Approximately 35–45 doors over the investment period — rooms, bars and estates. Quality over volume
- The bar goes first: a 1297 bar proves the city before a restaurant commits to it
- The address before the chef; the chef before the build. No opening without both signed
- Every deal underwritten on restaurant-level profitability — awards are the by-product, not the plan
- No single door above 10% of the portfolio at cost; diversification by city, arm, format and price point
- Every opening must pass two tests: a room a critic would envy with a P&L an operator would sign — and the Monaco Test
How the money comes back — the yield
Distributed annually, from four registers of cash:
| Register | Mechanism |
|---|---|
| Rooms & covers | Restaurant operating profit — covers times spend, run by operators, after the chef’s share. The principal cash engine of the Domaine. |
| Counters & the coast | The bars: twelve seats turned three times a night at beverage-led margins above 25%. The beach clubs: a year’s profit earned between May and September, at club margins the flat months cannot erode. |
| The pour | The estate is its own market. Wine, whisky, gin and beer made by the Domaine are poured in the Domaine’s own rooms at full retail — maker’s margin, distributor’s margin and retailer’s margin, all kept — and sold by the case far beyond them. |
| The roll | The Long Table: joining fees and annual dues on 1,297 seats — plus what only members are offered: en primeur from the vineyards, numbered private casks from the still, the first tables of every opening. Membership cash arrives before a single cover is served. |
How the money comes back — the exit
| Asset | Mechanism |
|---|---|
| Named rooms & marques | Acclaimed restaurants and their brands sell to operators and groups at multiples of profit — acclaim, full books and a documented record are themselves the valuation case. |
| The ground | Vineyard land — the one ground the Domaine owns — appreciates independently of the wine. The 1297 addresses pay for their anchor in commercial terms: favourable occupancy and opening contributions. No real-estate exposure, by design. |
| The sleeping stock | Wine in the Cellar and whisky in cask — bought as young stock, sold as aged and scarce. It appreciates while it waits, and the Domaine chooses when to wake it. |
| The platform | The hallmark itself: the formats, the marques, the Long Table roll. Saleable whole, at a strategic premium, to whoever wants what cannot be started from scratch. |
What no other fund can copy
Restaurant funds exist. None of them holds Monaco. The Fund’s edge is not a thesis — it is provenance, scarcity and a membership no competitor can mint.
The Long Table
One table, running through every room of the Domaine — 1,297 seats, worldwide. A seat is a guaranteed place at every 1297 restaurant, bar and beach club, priority for residencies and private rooms, first call on the Cellar, and a place when the Long Table is laid in full. Joining and annual fees flow to the Fund as revenue no cover count constrains. The founding seats are reserved, first, for the Fund’s investors.
The Rock Residency
Each season, one chef takes the cliff kitchen at Grimaldi Gardens — ten minutes by boat from the Rock, on ground the Grimaldis have held for seven centuries. A residency no city address can offer, and the network’s proving ground for the next flagship appointment.
The park feeds the table
The forty-hectare park at Grimaldi Gardens — joining the Hanbury Botanical Gardens as one of the most biodiverse stretches of the Riviera — grows for the kitchens — and for the still: the 1297 gin’s botanicals are cut from the same ground. Sea-to-table from the Ligurian coast, garden-to-plate from the estate, and kitchens designed net-zero in operation: the first fine-dining group built to that standard from the ground.
The hallmark
1297 does not put its name over the door — the chef’s ego is the point, not the problem. The mark is carried the way great silver carries its standard: small, permanent, in the details. A hallmark can be extended to a bar, a vineyard, a cellar bottle — a brand cannot. That is what lets the estate grow without ever diluting.
The Monaco Season
One major event a year — always in Monaco. The whole estate comes home: every chef, every keeper, every winemaker — a week of tables, counters and cellars, culminating in the Long Table itself, laid for the whole Domaine at Grimaldi Gardens. The Season is how everything links to 1297 without anyone being chained to it — and the hardest invitation of the year to come by.
Scarcity, kept
The portfolio is capped by discipline, not by capital. Most of what the Fund is shown, it will decline. A 1297 table is meant to become its own credential — the quiet proof of taste for a considered international community — and scarcity is the condition of that.
MIDI — a beer for the ice bucket
The Incubation compartment exists to prove new marques inside the estate before they earn a door of their own. Its first venture is MIDI: a Monaco lager built to sit where only rosé has sat — in the ice bucket, on the table, all afternoon.
The story is the specification
Monaco is the one place on earth where the Alps fall straight into the Mediterranean. MIDI is that geography in a bottle: soft alpine water from the Mercantour — the technical reason a lager finishes clean and dry — and citron de Menton, IGP-protected, from the coast beneath it. The whole provenance sits inside a twenty-mile radius, and the marketing claim and the brewing specification are the same sentence. Three flavours at launch discipline: Citron de Menton alone, then Pêche Blanche, then Rose de Grasse as an annual limited release.
The competitor is rosé, not beer
On that coast, beer is a status downgrade: the four o’clock beach table and the nine o’clock dinner table both belong to a bottle of Provence rosé in an ice bucket. MIDI does not set out to be a better lager — it sets out to be the first beer that earns a place in the bucket. Bottle in ice, poured at the table into a stemmed glass: a serve, not a beer. The drinker is not the beer drinker trading up but the rosé drinker on a third glass at four in the afternoon who wants something colder, lighter and less alcoholic — a large, wealthy, entirely unserved table. The precedent for building a category on this exact coastline and letting the aura export itself is established; one coast, one category, then the world.
The law is the moat
France bans lifestyle alcohol advertising, which closes the channel every incumbent was built on — no one can outspend this venture into the category, because there is nothing to spend on. Monaco is sovereign, and the ban stops at the border: the imagery the category cannot legally make in France is made freely on the Rock. Every euro that cannot go into advertising goes into the glass, the foil and the serve. The bottle is the media buy.
Made for the estate — and proof of it
The house bottle sells everywhere and carries the margin. MIDI Réserve — numbered, longer-lagered, in its own mould — is bottled for 1297’s rooms only and never sold outside them: the estate’s exclusivity, and the object every other venue on the coast will ask to have in its own edition. That mechanic opens the coast without discounting. Served in returnable glass in the on-trade, it is also the estate’s net-zero doctrine made physical: a fund can claim the standard on paper; a bottle taken back, washed and refilled fifteen times is evidence of it.
How incubation works
Small capital, hard gates. MIDI launches on modest six-figure capital: first production run of fifty thousand bottles, first public appearance at the Fête du Citron in Menton, launch in Grand Prix week, fifteen to twenty accounts on the coast in the first season, the Yacht Show to close it. It keeps its own name — the hallmark discipline: 1297 beneath the marque, never over the door — and it must clear its gates on real quotes, not projections. Prove the coast, and it graduates into Spirits & Brews as a house marque. Fall short, and the estate has spent the price of one deliberate experiment. That is what the compartment is for.
Terms, risk and the papers
The commercial terms, the risks stated plainly, and the data room — fifteen numbered documents, every one readable in this room — live one click away, so the story above stays a story.
