Gérard Bertrand

The Climb

Gérard Bertrand’s work in wine is rooted in the Corbières, at Château de Villemajou, where family apprenticeship set the terms for everything that followed. The historic terroir is not a backdrop here; it is the training ground that shaped a former rugby union player into a winemaker in family estate / Languedoc-Roussillon and the owner or manager of 13 estates in the Languedoc Roussillon Region. The line from field to vineyard is not decorative. It shows how discipline, repetition, and attention to place can travel across trades without losing force. University of Toulouse added another layer of rigor to that formation, pairing study with the demands of a career built on physical and mental control. Gérard Bertrand then moved through rugby and wine in a sequence that reads like parallel practice: rugby player at RC Narbonne (1984–2001), rugby player at Stade Français (until 1994), captain at Stade Français (until 1994), rugby union player at France, rugby player and wine grower (1987–1994), and president at RC Narbonne. The throughline is leadership under pressure, first on the pitch and then in the vineyard, where timing, judgment, and consistency carry the same weight. Scale matters in this story, but only because it is tied to responsibility. Gérard Bertrand’s work across the Languedoc Roussillon Region reflects a model built on estates rather than a single property, with each site carrying its own conditions and demands. That is where the craft sits: in managing multiple places without flattening them, and in treating inheritance as an obligation to read land carefully rather than as a ready-made credential. There is a directness to the move from team sport to estate management. As president at RC Narbonne, Gérard Bertrand worked in a setting where structure, trust, and decision-making were part of the job, much as they were in rugby player roles at RC Narbonne (1984–2001) and Stade Français (until 1994). The same can be said for his wine work: one part collective effort, one part personal discipline, all of it shaped by the capacity to build over time.