Who owns laurent perrier champagne

After blowing their way through a number of armored steel doors, the unit discovered a stash of over , bottles of wine, including hundreds of cases of first- growth Bordeaux , vintage Champagnes, and aged Cognacs. De Nonancourt was later awarded the Croix de Guerre for his wartime service.

In , de Nonancourt returned to Champagne, eager to start work in the family business. Following a three-year apprenticeship in the vineyards, cellar, office, and on the road as a salesman, de Nonancourt was appointed chairman and chief executive of Laurent-Perrier. He was just 28 years old when he started and held the position for 60 years. De Nonancourt now sought to expand Laurent-Perrier still further, seeking to diversify beyond champagnes.

In , the company added a new distribution subsidiary in Switzerland. By the early s, some 20 percent of Laurent-Perrier's sales came from its diversification drive. However, the company had taken on a heavy debt load, and, with the added burden of a worldwide recession, the company slipped into losses.

At the end of , Laurent-Perrier had turned to a larger partner, allowing distribution giant Grand Metropolitan plc later Diageo to acquire 20 percent of its capital through its United Distillers and Vintners subsidiary. This relationship also gave Laurent-Perrier access to Grand Met's worldwide distribution network. Laurent-Perrier's diversification proved, however, too ambitious and, by the mids, the company was heavily in debt and facing losses. Laurent-Perrier began selling off most of its diversified holdings by By then under president Yves Dumont, the company was once again in the black.

Yet the agreement between the two giants included a non-competition clause. The resolution to this conflict came in when Laurent-Perrier itself bought back Grand Met's shares.

The company was once again a fully independent champagne producer, one of the few remaining after a broader industry consolidation in the late s. The end of its relationship with Grand Metropolitan encouraged Laurent-Perrier to reinforce its own distribution operations. In the company opened two new foreign distribution subsidiaries, in Belgium and the United States. The following year, Laurent-Perrier acquired full control of the Castellane champagne operation. Riding high on the wave of orders leading up to the year celebration, Laurent-Perrier went public in , with a listing on the Paris stock exchange.

The de Nonancourt family nonetheless retained control of the company. Champagne purchases for the year celebration helped swell the company's sales to a record high of nearly EUR million in Yet champagne houses had nonetheless proven too optimistic, and a massive overproduction resulted in a severe hangover for the industry. Paradoxically, widespread concerns of champagne shortages had caused many people to stock up on champagne in , with the result that total industry sales dropped by nearly a third in Laurent-Perrier too was hit by the sharp drop in sales.

However, its concentration on the relatively high-end segments helped to cushion its profits. When he became manager, Laurent-Perrier was 98th among the producers of Champagne, but by the turn of the century, it was one of the top houses.

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