Seagram heir under contract to sell longtime Atherton home

An heir to the Seagram beverage fortune has found a buyer for his longtime Atherton home, The Real Deal has learned. 

Samuel Bronfman II, the grandson of Samuel Bronfman, the founder of the company, is under contract to sell a 3-acre estate that he has owned since the 1980s. The deal for the home, located at 30 Atherton Avenue, is now pending with a last asking price of $35 million, according to Zillow. 

Hugh Cornish, the broker in the charge of the listing, declined to provide the closing price for the property. 

The home, described in listings as “one of Atherton’s finest estates,” was built in 1932 and spans about 13,500 square feet. Bronfman put the home on the market in September last year with an asking price of $42 million, according to a previous report from Mansion Global. The initial price was a 92 percent increase from the $3.3 million that Bronfman paid in 1986. 

The property has a total of seven bedrooms. The estate also includes a guest house, a separate apartment, a pool and spa, a tennis court, a putting green and a “sommelier-worthy 5,000-bottle wine cellar.” 

The entire property was “artfully rebuilt” in 2001, with Bronfman supposedly spending the equivalent of $22 million in 2024 currency for the renovations. The kitchen and the family room were also remodeled in 2020.

Bronfman figured in a famous kidnapping case in 1975. Then 21 years old, he was abducted from his father’s home in New York. He was recovered from his kidnappers after his father paid a $2.3 million ransom. From there, he went on to work as an executive at his family’s firm. Later on, he became the co-founder of wine investment company Bacchus Capital Management. 

In 2000, the Bronfman family sold the company to Vivendi for $30 billion.

The Atherton home sale adds to the list of expensive San Mateo County deals in the past few months. In July, two off-market deals for Peninsula homes closed for more than  $30 million. Last month, Iconiq Capital, the family office for tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerg and Jack Dorsey, completed the priciest home sale in San Mateo County this year, paying $54.4 million for a home in Woodside.