Champagne-family scion steered firm’s non-bubbly business

Jean Taittinger, who has died aged 89, was a prominent member of a famous dynasty of Champagne producers and served as justice minister under the French President Georges Pompidou.

Jean Marie Pierre Hubert Taittinger was born on Jan. 25, 1923, the eldest son of Pierre Taittinger, who had founded the family Champagne business in the 1930s. He died Sept. 23.

In 1945, Jean fought under Free French Gen. Edgard de Larminat, commander of the French II Corps, and took part in the battle for the city of Royan, one of the Atlantic “pockets” to which the Germans held on well after the liberation of the rest of France. The battle was notable for being the first occasion on which American bombers made extensive use of napalm. More than 3,000 French civilians were in the town, of whom half were killed or injured in the air raids. After the war Taittinger began his career in the family business.

It was his grandfather, Pierre Alexandre Taittinger, who had founded the dynasty when, after fleeing his native Lorraine when it was annexed by Germany in 1870, he propelled himself into Parisian society by marrying the daughter of a powerful industrialist. Their son, Pierre, married into even greater wealth, and in 1931 bought a little-known Champagne house, Fourneaux, founded two centuries earlier. A year later he bought the Château de la Marquetterie, near Reims, in the Champagne region.

Taittinger Champagne, as it became known, grew to be the third-largest estate in the region and — until it was sold to an American investment company in 2005 — was one of the few champagne houses to remain family-owned.

In 1954 Pierre took a controlling interest in the Societe du Louvre, which owned a range of upmarket assets, including several exclusive Parisian hotels, and developed it as a holding company for hotels and luxury goods companies.

The business developed under Pierre’s sons, Claude and Jean, who took over following their father’s death.

Claude concentrated on the Champagne side of the business while Jean — who served as honorary president of Taittinger Champagne — took on the family’s other interests.

By the time he handed over the reins to his daughter, AnneMarie Taittinger, in 1997, the company was valued at $800 million and had an empire that included luxury hotels and French crystal maker Baccarat.