Tigner, Reimers promoted to top positions at Jackson Family Wines

Jackson Family Wines on Thursday announced it has promoted two top executives outside the family of founder Jess Jackson to help navigate the Santa Rosa company’s future in an increasingly competitive and consolidated marketplace.

Rick Tigner, a 25-year company veteran, will become chief executive officer of Sonoma County’s largest vintner, which employs approximately 1,100 workers and produces 5.6 million cases annually. Tigner had served as president since 2010.

Hugh Reimers, the company’s chief operating officer, has been promoted to president. An Australian native and winemaker, Reimers now will oversee global sales and marketing in addition to all production activities.

Barbara Banke, Jackson’s widow, remains chairman and proprietor. Former CEO Don Hartford, who is married to Jackson’s oldest daughter, Jenny, continues to serve as vice chairman of the company. Tigner will report to both Banke and Hartford in his new position at the nation’s ninth-largest wine company.

In a statement, Banke said Tigner will provide “strategic leadership for the company, working to establish long-range goals and plans.”

In recent years, the company has looked outside California to increase its vineyard holdings, specifically in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, which is noted for pinot noir grapes, as well as a vineyard purchase in South Africa.

It also made strategic winery purchases, most notably in January buying Santa Rosa’s Siduri Wines, which made a name for itself through single-vineyard pinot noirs, a varietal that continues to gain market share more than 10 years after it was popularized in the movie “Sideways.”

But it faces increasing competition in the premium market as E&J Gallo, the country’s largest vintner, has been very aggressive this year with purchases of J Vineyards & Winery in Healdsburg, Talbott Vineyards in Monterey County, and the historic Asti winery and the Souverain brand. The Wine Group, the nation’s second-largest vintner, bought Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen.

Tigner worked in sales at Miller Brewing Co. and Gallo before joining Jackson Family Wines in 1991. He is most widely known for his 2012 appearance on “Undercover Boss,” the CBS reality TV program, and he has been a prodigious fundraiser for research into Parkinson’s disease as his wife, Wendy, was diagnosed with the illness in 2006.

Banke called Tigner “a terrific team-builder and a force for quality at all levels of our business.”

Reimers had served as chief winemaker at Constellation Brands, the country’s third-largest wine company, and came over to Jackson in 2009, working primarily in production positions before being named COO in 2011.

Banke noted that Reimers has “been instrumental in both land and brand acquisitions over the past several years, as well as the ongoing improvement of our winemaking practices.”

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.