Jess Jackson, who died last week, was one of the most important figures in the modern American wine business. If Robert Mondavi gave Americans a reason to love wine, Jackson gave them a wine to love. His Kendall-Jackson chardonnay is one of the most popular wines in the country, and has been almost since he introduced it in 1982.
How big a deal is the K-J Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay? That first vintage sold 20,000 cases. Today, K-J sells some 2.5 million cases of the chardonnay, which would make it alone the 12th biggest winery in the country, according to Wine Business Monthly.
Yet Jackson's death will probably elicit little of the admiration and respect that marked Mondavi's passing in 2008. One reason, say people who knew him, is that Jackson was not an easy man to get along with — something, they say, he often acknowledged. A lawyer, he liked to sue people, and that included Jed Steele, the winemaker who made that first vintage of chardonnay. He sued E&J Gallo, the biggest fish in the pond. And when, later in life he raced thoroughbreds (his horses won the Preakness twice), he sued horse people, too.
More, after the jump: