Kendall-Jackson's Jess Jackson has died

[Robin Garr]

Just in by Email from Lewis Perdue's Wine Industry Insight:

Jess Jackson Dies
Jess Jackson has died.

Details from the company and family are not yet available. Multiple sources have confirmed to Wine Industry Insight that an email went to company employees shortly before 6 a.m. PDT informing them that he had passed away.

No cause of death or other details are available at this time.

From the Kendall-Jackson Web site:

Born in 1930, Jackson was raised in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley's Boalt Law School. In 1974, Jess and his family bought an 80-acre pear and walnut orchard in Lakeport, California. After converting the orchard to a vineyard, Jess began selling his grapes to local wineries. In 1982, he produced his first bottle of wine under the Kendall-Jackson label. Jess, a founding member of Family Winemakers of California, his wife Barbara Banke, and his family still run the day-to-day business of the winery.

[Robin Garr]

Link to a more complete obituary in The Speck:
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/44884

[David M. Bueker]

Obviously he wasn't young, but still a shock. Cancer's a bitch.

It's a front page story in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat this morning. pressdemocrat.com

John

Big obit in the Wash Post, too.

Link to a more complete obituary in The Speck:
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/44884

The article is misleading on some points.

The popularity of California Chardonnay first soared in the 1980s, thanks in part to the success of Vintner’s Reserve, and in doing so created a new category of wines, the so-called Fighting Varietals. They were good-quality wines called by their grape variety, priced at $5 to $10 to compete with generic blends like "Mountain Chablis" and "Hearty Burgundy.”

The fighting varietal category was actually created by Glen Ellen (750s) and August Sebastiani (1.5Ls) in the early 1980s. They were priced at $3-4/750, sourced off a then-glutted bulk and spot grape market, and called fighting varietals because they took back share from the best selling imports of the time such as Macon, Soave, french Table wines, etc. KJ VR Chard was actually up-market from those wines at $6-7. Everyone points to the RS as the wine's successful feature, but in fact KJ pioneered mass production of such higher end techniques as barrel fermentation and the early vintages of the wine took home boatloads of medals and good reviews.

with wife Banke he enjoyed an affluent lifestyle... In 1992 Jackson won a bitter lawsuit against former winemaker Jed Steele that prohibited Steele from divulging the winemaking formula for Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay

These might give the wrong impression. The guy was one of the most intense workaholics I've ever known. The notion of a "secret formula" was regarded as bizarre by most winemakers at the time.