Jess Stonestreet Jackson introduced Americans to the pleasures of Chardonnay.
Mr. Jackson, who died Thursday at age 81, was the founder of Kendall-Jackson winery, whose slightly sweet Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay marked an early entry into the "fighting varietals" movement of the 1980s.
Production of the wine, which sold at a premium to traditional California jug wines, grew to more than two million cases annually by the mid-1990s from 16,000 in its first year, 1982. (click below to continue reading)
Mr. Jackson's holdings under his closely held Jackson Family Wines grew apace, to some 14,000 acres of coastal California vineyards, plus wineries in France, Italy, Chile and Australia, producing more than three dozen upmarket wines.
When it added him to its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 2000, Forbes labeled Mr. Jackson "America's first vino-billionaire."
Growing up in San Francisco in the Depression, Mr. Jackson sold chickens and eggs on street corners. He held a series of odd jobs including candy maker, salesman and longshoreman, and worked as a policeman while putting himself through law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
He became a land-use lawyer with a thriving practice, but in the early 1970s decided to quit the law. Farming, he told Entrepreneur magazine in 2010, "restores your moral center and your soul to the relative insignificance of life in the universe."
On an 80-acre former pear and walnut farm in Lakeport, Calif., Mr. Jackson and his first wife, Jane Kendall, began raising grapes and sold them to area vineyards. He dabbled in winemaking himself, but it was not until the bottom fell out of the grape market in the early 1980s that he hired professional winemakers to produce it in quantity.
The mild sweetness of Vintner's Reserve—Mr. Jackson preferred to call it "fruit forward"—came about almost by accident, when fermentation stopped too early, leaving extra sugar in the wine. The wine was a success from the start, winning a major competition in 1983. It became a fixture on restaurant wine lists across the nation, luring customers away from less sophisticated wines like sweet white zinfandel. The wine tops industry tracker Restaurant Wine's annual list of most-often-ordered wines, as it has for more than a decade.
Mr. Jackson diversified into other varietals like sauvignon blanc and merlot, helping to lead the California wine industry toward production of more premium, higher-price bottles.
In 1997, he sued E&J Gallo Winery for copying his label on its new upscale line, Turning Leaf. Mr. Jackson told The Wall Street Journal he was "wrassling a gorilla," but he lost. He retained a reputation as hard-nosed and litigious.
In 2003, Mr. Jackson plunged into Thoroughbred racing—with the same whirlwind success he had in wine-making. His horse, Curlin, won the 2007 Preakness Stakes and Breeders' Cup Classic and was named Horse of the Year in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, his horse Rachel Alexandra was the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years—and was in her turn named Horse of the Year. Rachel Alexandra retired in 2010, and she was bred with Curlin this February.
Stonestreet Stables announced in March that Rachel Alexandra is in foal with an expected due date of Feb. 1, 2012.
"Imagine what possibilities those two super horses might produce," Mr. Jackson told the Blood Horse magazine.
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