2019 Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay

Kendall-Jackson

Jess Jackson, visionary winemaker and founder of our company, was noted for popularizing Chardonnay with his Kendall-Jackson Winery and was one of the most successful independent winery owners in the world.

Known for his fearless, iconoclastic approach to business, Jackson became one of the world’s most successful self-made men by taking chances in businesses that were anything but a sure thing. He started first by selecting grapes from the best vineyards in California and turning them into a small bottling of Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve that soon became the most popular Chardonnay in America.

A one-time longshoreman and police officer who put himself through University of California Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, Jackson became one of the best-known figures in American viticulture, as Kendall-Jackson became the best-selling Chardonnay in America for over two decades. He went on to found Jackson Family Wines, a winery holding company that, in addition to Kendall-Jackson Winery, owns and operates more than 35 individual wineries located around the world.

Raised in San Francisco during the Great Depression, Jackson worked as a farmer, policeman, and later as a land-use attorney. The law firm he founded went on to argue several cases before the Supreme Court. He started the Kendall-Jackson wine business with the family’s 1974 purchase of an 80-acre pear and walnut orchard in Lakeport, California that he converted to a vineyard. In 1982, he produced his first bottle of wine under the Kendall-Jackson label. This decidedly unique Chardonnay was an instant hit with consumers. In 1983 the wine won the first double Platinum Award ever presented by the American Wine Competition.