Jeanjean loses its patriarch Bernard, “Languedoc wine pioneer and figurehead”

our years separate their birth years and their passing: Bernard Jeanjean passed away on December 19 at the age of 89, four years after his elder brother Hugues, who died in May 2021. “Languedoc wine pioneer and figurehead”, Bernard Jeanjean was the “historic chairman of Maison Jeanjean and AdVini”, explains a press statement issued by the AdVini group, 43% owned by the Jeanjean family which is currently negotiating a transfer of shares in exchange for assets owned by Cordier by InVivo. Bernard Jeanjean chaired AdVini’s supervisory board until 2020, when he transferred the responsibility over to Pierre Guénant, who passed away in 2022.

Bernard and Hugues Jeanjean represented the fifth generation of the Jeanjean family in the Languedoc wine industry, joining their father – negociant Paul Jeanjean – after the Second World War. Their task was to scale up the family business based in Saint-Félix-de-Lodez (Hérault) at a time when multiple retail was gaining ground in France. The two brothers took over the family firm in 1965 and broadened its scope by developing export sales and buying vineyards in the South of France and beyond (Rhone, South-West France, Provence and Bordeaux). They also innovated, both from a technical and marketing perspective, bottling their wines at the winery using mobile bottling facilities for instance. In 1994, they also floated their company on the stock exchange, where it continues to be listed, currently with Euronext Paris.