He always keeps the letter with him, carefully preserved on his computer. Alexandre Ricard read it aloud, but he could just as easily have recited it with his eyes closed, as he knows it by heart. It's dated April 2015, and the tall fellow with an impenetrable gaze remembered that day, of course: He'd just been appointed CEO of the Pernod Ricard Group, a few months before celebrating his 43^rd birthday, making him the youngest chief executive in the CAC 40.

"My dearest son, it might seem absurd to declare that it is you who have made me a father, much more than I have made you a son." So begins the letter. A dozen carefully worded sentences, which the Ricard enunciated in a slightly trembling voice that betrayed emotion despite his marble face. "To quote Jules Renard [1864-1910]: 'A father has two lives: his own and that of his son.' I thank you for making me experience this, this pride in being my son's father."

When you delve into the Ricard family tale, you hear a thousand anecdotes about its emblematic characters. About "Alex," as everyone calls him, it is often said that, from his early teens, he seemed to have "self-designated" himself as the future successor. "He put himself forward," said his cousin Myrna Giron-Ricard, who can remember him at the age of 12, "putting on a suit and tie" to visit his grandfather, Paul Ricard, the company's founder. But, curiously, the cousins never mention the role his father, Bernard Ricard, ousted after just three years at the helm, might have played in this precocious vocation.

Makeshift home laboratory

At Les Embiez, the charming island opposite Six-Fours-les-Plages in southeastern France (bought long ago by Paul Ricard, it now serves as a meeting point for the 50-odd members of the clan, as well as a tourist destination), you can take the mistral-beaten path up the hill. There, halfway up, overlooking the sea, two tombstones stand side by side: those of Paul and his second son, Patrick. It was Patrick who, for 30 years, directed and developed the Pernod Ricard Group, now the world's number two spirits company, with sales of over €12 billion and 18,900 employees. Alexandre's father, Bernard Ricard, is not buried here. On the island, as at the group's Paris headquarters, there is nothing to commemorate his existence. It's as if he's been erased from official history. Even Wikipedia has "forgotten" to devote a single entry to him. He's "a banished man," said one of the Ricard heirs.

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