Jess Jackson, the man who turned America on to chardonnay and went on to build a wine empire, has died at age 81.
Jackson, who had cancer, died Thursday at his home in Geyserville, winery officials said.
The leader of the hugely successful Kendall-Jackson winery in Sonoma County, Jackson packed several lifetimes worth of careers into his eight decades. He was a longshoreman, a noted attorney, a vintner and, late in life, found success as a racehorse owner.
Tall and with a sweep of white hair, Jackson was a familiar figure in the wine world, where he was known as the “mountain man” because of his passion for vineyards that cling to rocky slopes. Mountain soil is poor and stony and the vines have to work harder to survive, producing fruit with a more intense flavor than grapes that have an easier go of it.
“Everything’s desperate up here. The vine’s desperate, the farmer’s desperate,” Jackson told me in an interview several years ago. “But when you get it, it’s world-class.”
He was born in Los Angeles but raised in San Francisco and spent summers in wine country as a teenager. He worked his way through Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school and became a San Francisco attorney specializing in land-use and property rights.
In 1974 he bought a ranch in Northern California, looking for a place to relax.
But relaxing was probably the one thing Jackson wasn’t good at and by 1982 he had founded a winery.
The Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve chardonnay which has graced countless dinner tables _ and was once spotted on the counter of the Obamas’ Chicago home _ started out as an accident. Fermentation “stuck,” meaning less of the grape sugar turned into alcohol, which made the wine a little bit sweeter.
People went wild for it and it has remained a consistent consumer favorite.
In addition to Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, other wines in the Jackson Family collection are Cambria, Stonestreet, Edmeades, La Crema, Cardinale, Lokoya, Hartford Family Winery, Verite, Atalon, Carmel Road, Murphy Goode, La Jota, Freemark Abbey, Bryon Estates, Arrowood, in the United States; Chateau Lassegue in France; Tenuta di Arceno in Italy; Yangarra in Australia; and Calina in Chile.
Jackson Family Wines is one of California’s few remaining family-owned winery groups.
In 2007, Jackson embarked on a new career, becoming majority stakeholder in the racehorse Curlin, which was Horse of the Year for 2007 and 2008. After that, his filly, Rachel Alexandra, became the first filly to win the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in 85 years. She was 2009 Horse of the Year. And Jackson won Sportsman of the Year 2008 Insider Award.
Survivors include his wife, Barbara Banke, five children, Jennifer Hartford, Laura Giron, Katie Jackson, Julia Jackson and Christopher Jackson and two grandchildren, Hailey Hartford and MacLean Hartford.