Bernard de Nonancourt

Who is Bernard de Nonancourt?

Bernard de Nonancourt was a French businessman, member of the French Resistance and president of the Laurent-Perrier champagne house for more than fifty years. Under de Nonancourt' s leadership, Laurent-Perrier expanded to become the world's third largest seller of champagne by 2005. He was known as "Le Grand Bernard" within the industry.

De Nonancourt's mother, Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt, purchased the Tours-sur-Marne-based champagne maker that would become Laurent-Perrier in 1938. His older brother, Maurice de Nonancourt, was originally intended to inherit the company from his mother, but he would die in a German concentration camp during World War II.

Bernard de Nonancourt and his older brother, Maurice, both joined the French Resistance following the German invasion of France. In 1945, Sergeant de Nonancourt and his forces reached Adolf Hitler's private wine cellar located at Kehlsteinhaus in Bavaria. De Nonancourt blew off the steel doors leading to the cellar, uncovering approximately 500,000 bottles, including hundreds of cases of 1928 Champagne Salon, which had been stolen by German soldiers in 1940.