Fleurie, Domaine Pardon

The passion for wine and the vine have been associated with the Pardon family since 1820, when Antoine Joseph Pardon, a wine-grower at l’Ermitage in the commune of Régnié Durette, was already producing and selling his wines in France and throughout Europe. At the beginning of last century, in the 1900s, Louis increased sales to restaurants, hotels, and brasseries in Paris (mainly) and also in other French cities. After the First World War, in order to meet his customers’ growing demands for quality wines from Burgundy and Côtes du Rhône, Louis obtained a licence as a Wine-producer / Merchant, then selected and added a number of wines to his range. This led to substantial expansion for Pardon & Fils in this period. Moreover, in the late ’20s, his two sons, Antoine and Louis, came to help him. In 1938 he bought up an estate with wine-making facilities and vineyards in Fleurie. Upon his death, his son Antoine took over, his brother leaving the family business for other horizons. In the early ’60s, Antoine’s youngest son Jean-Jacques came to join him and expanded sales of bottled wine; previously, the whole output had been sold in full, half, and quarter barrels. Then in 1991 Jean-Jacques’s eldest son Jean-Marc joined the family business, to handle mainly the sales side. In 1993 it was the turn of his brother Eric, a graduate wine expert, to take charge of the technical side.