Jess Jackson (billionaire)
Encyclopedia
Jess Stonestreet Jackson, Jr. (February 18, 1930 – April 21, 2011) was an American
wine
entrepreneur
and self-made businessman. He started the Kendall-Jackson
wine business with the family's 1974 purchase of an 80 acres (32.4 ha) pear
and walnut
orchard
in Lakeport, California
that was converted to a vineyard
. The first release of Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay in 1982 closed the gap between the super premium and cheap wine market. Today, Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay is one of the most popular wines on the market. His style as a vintner
was focused upon single-vineyard, mountain grown wines.
's Sunset District. His father, a teacher, was out of work three times while he was growing up, and there were times when the family had to survive only on rice. To help support his family, Jackson started working at an early age. From the age of five, when he got his first job as a paper boy, he worked a variety of careers, including candy maker, a soda jerk, a temp at the post office, a hops picker, a longshoreman, a teamster, a lifeguard, an ambulance driver, among other things, all before graduating from the University of California Berkeley law school.
Jackson graduated from San Francisco's Abraham Lincoln High School. He earned a law degree from Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley
. While studying law he simultaneously held down jobs as a dock laborer, Berkeley
policeman and an ambulance driver to put himself through school. Upon his graduation from Boalt in 1951, Jackson started practicing real estate law.
. Jackson was one of the founding members of the American California Trial Lawyers Association. He also pursued other business interests, including being one of the four founding members in the 1970’s of Decimus, a company which leased IBM
mainframe computers to corporations.
In 1974 Jackson and then wife, Jane Kendall Jackson, purchased an 80-acre pear-and-walnut orchard in Lakeport. He converted it to growing premium Chardonnay
and other varietals after realizing that there was increasing demand for high-quality grapes in the area. He sold the property’s grapes to local wineries until 1981, when a down market led to a surplus of grapes on the market. Faced with the prospect of selling his grapes for a price that wouldn’t cover the costs of growing them, he decided to make his own wine. Instead of following the market by producing low-quality, inexpensive wines, Jackson studied the market and realized that there was a shortage of high-quality wines at affordable prices. He decided to produce wines that would fill that gap, and, two years later, he released the first Kendall-Jackson
Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay. That year it became the first wine to ever win a Platinum Award from the American Wine Competition.
Jackson and Kendall divorced in the early 1980s and Jackson later married Barbara Banke. Banke became his lifelong partner and co-manager of their wine businesses. Jackson and Banke continued to expand their business, eventually owning about 25,000 acres in California, 14,000 of which were planted with wine grapes.
In 1992, Jackson prevailed in a highly contentious lawsuit against his former winemaker Jed Steele that prohibited Steele from revealing the formula for the Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay. In 1997, Jackson lost a lawsuit against E & J Gallo Winery
in which Jackson alleged that Gallo's Turning Leaf label was a ripoff of his Vintner's Reserve.
Among the wineries in his Jackson Family Wines portfolio, as of 2009, are Kendall-Jackson
, Murphy-Goode, Robert Pecota Winery, Byron Estates, Edmeades, Matanzas Creek, La Crema, Stonestreet, Arrowood, Lajota, Cardinale, Atalon, Lokoya, Carmel Road, Cambria, Hartford Family Wines, Vérité, Archipel, Chateau Potelle, and Freemark Abbey. As of early 2009 it was ranked as the ninth largest winery holding company in the United States. Jackson's brands at the time of his death were producing 5 million cases of wine annually.
In 2005 Jackson was listed by Forbes Magazine as the 366th wealthiest person in the world (tied with many others), with 1.8 billion dollars in assets. The 2010 list by Forbes Magazine placed Jackson as the 536th richest person in the world with 1.9 billion dollars in assets.
sponsors the induction of wine industry leaders into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame. Nominees are selected by a nominating committee, which creates the list of nominees that is later voted on by group of wine writers, critics, historians, and past inductees. The nominees with the most votes are then inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame.
Jess Jackson was inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame in 2009 for his outstanding contributions to the wine industry. He was among several other industry luminaries being inducted that year, including winemaker Warren Winiarski
, whose Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon
won first place against Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion
in the 1976 Judgment of Paris and forever changed the way California wines were viewed worldwide, and the legendary Beringer Brothers, whose award-winning wines helped to establish Napa Valley's reputation as a top grape-growing region.
Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve help Chardonnay become the most popular grape varietal amongst American wine drinkers. Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay is the most popular selling wine made from that varietal, which makes it the most popular wine in America.
Ray Isle of Food and Wine Magazine ranked Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay as one of his "50 Wines You Can Always Trust" in April 2007.
Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay is also a staple in the household of Barack Obama
.
In 2007 Jackson bought a controlling interest in Curlin, who won the Preakness Stakes and the Breeders' Cup Classic
in that same year. In 2008 the horse went on to win the $6 million purse at the Dubai World Cup.
Fresh on the heals of Curlin's success, Jackson, On May 6, 2009, along with Harold T. McCormick, Stonestreet Stables, announced the purchase of Rachel Alexandra
, winner of the Kentucky Oaks
by more than 20 lengths and undefeated in 2009. On May 16, 2009, she would go on to place first in the 2009 Preakness Stakes
. Rachel Alexandra
would go on to win 2009 American Horse of the Year. She was bred to Curlin upon her retirement. Jackson's total investments in racehorses totaled over $200 million..
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and self-made businessman. He started the Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates is a vineyard and winery, under the Kendall-Jackson brand, located in Santa Rosa, California in the Sonoma Valley wine country...
wine business with the family's 1974 purchase of an 80 acres (32.4 ha) pear
Pear
The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....
and walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...
orchard
Orchard
An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...
in Lakeport, California
Lakeport, California
Lakeport is an incorporated city and county seat of Lake County, California. Lakeport is located on the west shore of Clear Lake, at an elevation of 1355 feet...
that was converted to a vineyard
Vineyard
A vineyard is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice...
. The first release of Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay in 1982 closed the gap between the super premium and cheap wine market. Today, Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay is one of the most popular wines on the market. His style as a vintner
Vintner
A vintner is a wine merchant. You pronounce it like this In some modern use, in particular in American English, the term is alsoused as a synonym for winemaker....
was focused upon single-vineyard, mountain grown wines.
Early Life and Education
Jess Jackson grew up during the Great Depression and was raised in San FranciscoSan Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
's Sunset District. His father, a teacher, was out of work three times while he was growing up, and there were times when the family had to survive only on rice. To help support his family, Jackson started working at an early age. From the age of five, when he got his first job as a paper boy, he worked a variety of careers, including candy maker, a soda jerk, a temp at the post office, a hops picker, a longshoreman, a teamster, a lifeguard, an ambulance driver, among other things, all before graduating from the University of California Berkeley law school.
Jackson graduated from San Francisco's Abraham Lincoln High School. He earned a law degree from Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. While studying law he simultaneously held down jobs as a dock laborer, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
policeman and an ambulance driver to put himself through school. Upon his graduation from Boalt in 1951, Jackson started practicing real estate law.
Wine production
In the late 1950’s, Jess Jackson started a law firm in the San Francisco area, specializing in property rights issues, that went on to argue cases in front of the Supreme CourtSupreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...
. Jackson was one of the founding members of the American California Trial Lawyers Association. He also pursued other business interests, including being one of the four founding members in the 1970’s of Decimus, a company which leased IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
mainframe computers to corporations.
In 1974 Jackson and then wife, Jane Kendall Jackson, purchased an 80-acre pear-and-walnut orchard in Lakeport. He converted it to growing premium Chardonnay
Chardonnay
Chardonnay is a green-skinned grape variety used to make white wine. It is originated from the Burgundy wine region of eastern France but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from England to New Zealand...
and other varietals after realizing that there was increasing demand for high-quality grapes in the area. He sold the property’s grapes to local wineries until 1981, when a down market led to a surplus of grapes on the market. Faced with the prospect of selling his grapes for a price that wouldn’t cover the costs of growing them, he decided to make his own wine. Instead of following the market by producing low-quality, inexpensive wines, Jackson studied the market and realized that there was a shortage of high-quality wines at affordable prices. He decided to produce wines that would fill that gap, and, two years later, he released the first Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates is a vineyard and winery, under the Kendall-Jackson brand, located in Santa Rosa, California in the Sonoma Valley wine country...
Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay. That year it became the first wine to ever win a Platinum Award from the American Wine Competition.
Jackson and Kendall divorced in the early 1980s and Jackson later married Barbara Banke. Banke became his lifelong partner and co-manager of their wine businesses. Jackson and Banke continued to expand their business, eventually owning about 25,000 acres in California, 14,000 of which were planted with wine grapes.
In 1992, Jackson prevailed in a highly contentious lawsuit against his former winemaker Jed Steele that prohibited Steele from revealing the formula for the Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay. In 1997, Jackson lost a lawsuit against E & J Gallo Winery
E & J Gallo Winery
E & J Gallo Winery was founded in 1933 by Ernest Gallo and Julio Gallo in Modesto, California. E & J Gallo Winery is the largest exporter of California wines and is a large promoter of wines from Sonoma County.-History:...
in which Jackson alleged that Gallo's Turning Leaf label was a ripoff of his Vintner's Reserve.
Among the wineries in his Jackson Family Wines portfolio, as of 2009, are Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson
Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates is a vineyard and winery, under the Kendall-Jackson brand, located in Santa Rosa, California in the Sonoma Valley wine country...
, Murphy-Goode, Robert Pecota Winery, Byron Estates, Edmeades, Matanzas Creek, La Crema, Stonestreet, Arrowood, Lajota, Cardinale, Atalon, Lokoya, Carmel Road, Cambria, Hartford Family Wines, Vérité, Archipel, Chateau Potelle, and Freemark Abbey. As of early 2009 it was ranked as the ninth largest winery holding company in the United States. Jackson's brands at the time of his death were producing 5 million cases of wine annually.
In 2005 Jackson was listed by Forbes Magazine as the 366th wealthiest person in the world (tied with many others), with 1.8 billion dollars in assets. The 2010 list by Forbes Magazine placed Jackson as the 536th richest person in the world with 1.9 billion dollars in assets.
Vintner's Hall of Fame
Every year the Culinary Institute of AmericaCulinary Institute of America
The Culinary Institute of America is a non-profit culinary college located in Hyde Park USA, founded in 1946. The CIA also has branch campuses in St. Helena, California, and San Antonio, Texas, as well as a campus in Singapore. It is a not-for-profit academic institution of higher learning...
sponsors the induction of wine industry leaders into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame. Nominees are selected by a nominating committee, which creates the list of nominees that is later voted on by group of wine writers, critics, historians, and past inductees. The nominees with the most votes are then inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame.
Jess Jackson was inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame in 2009 for his outstanding contributions to the wine industry. He was among several other industry luminaries being inducted that year, including winemaker Warren Winiarski
Warren Winiarski
Warren Winiarski is California winemaker. Winiarski was born in a large Polish section of Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he entered the University of Chicago, then left for a school of agriculture and mining in Colorado, and finally graduated from St. John's College in...
, whose Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley...
won first place against Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion
Château Haut-Brion
Château Haut-Brion is a French wine, rated a Premier Cru Classé , produced in the Gironde region. It differs from the other wines on the list in its geographic location in the north of the wine-growing region of Graves...
in the 1976 Judgment of Paris and forever changed the way California wines were viewed worldwide, and the legendary Beringer Brothers, whose award-winning wines helped to establish Napa Valley's reputation as a top grape-growing region.
Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay
Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay debuted in 1982 with a 16,000 case production. In 1983, Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay won first ever Platinum Award from the American Wine Competition. Not coincidentally, American’s taste for the Chardonnay picked up at the same time. The wine is characterized as an oaky chardonnay with a slightly more residual sugar.Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve help Chardonnay become the most popular grape varietal amongst American wine drinkers. Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay is the most popular selling wine made from that varietal, which makes it the most popular wine in America.
Ray Isle of Food and Wine Magazine ranked Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay as one of his "50 Wines You Can Always Trust" in April 2007.
Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay is also a staple in the household of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
.
Thoroughbred horse racing
Jess Jackson won the horseraceinsider.com award Sportsman of the Year 2008 Insider Award: "To owner Jess Jackson for believing in the greatness of his beloved Curlin then went above and beyond the call to prove it."In 2007 Jackson bought a controlling interest in Curlin, who won the Preakness Stakes and the Breeders' Cup Classic
Breeders' Cup Classic
The Breeders' Cup Classic is a Grade I Weight for Age thoroughbred horse race for 3 year olds and older run at a distance of 1¼ miles on dirt. It is held annually at a different racetrack as part of the Breeders' Cup World Championships...
in that same year. In 2008 the horse went on to win the $6 million purse at the Dubai World Cup.
Fresh on the heals of Curlin's success, Jackson, On May 6, 2009, along with Harold T. McCormick, Stonestreet Stables, announced the purchase of Rachel Alexandra
Rachel Alexandra
Rachel Alexandra is a retired American Thoroughbred filly racehorse and the 2009 Horse of the Year. She is renowned as the May 16, 2009 Preakness Stakes winner, the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the first filly to win the race in 85 years history...
, winner of the Kentucky Oaks
Kentucky Oaks
The Kentucky Oaks is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred fillies staged annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. The race currently covers 1⅛ miles at Churchill Downs; the horses carry 121 pounds . The Kentucky Oaks is held on the Friday before the Kentucky Derby each year...
by more than 20 lengths and undefeated in 2009. On May 16, 2009, she would go on to place first in the 2009 Preakness Stakes
2009 Preakness Stakes
The 2009 Preakness Stakes was the 134th running of the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of horse racing's Triple Crown. The value of the race was $1,100,000 in stakes. The race was sponsored by BlackBerry and hence officially was called Blackberry Preakness Stakes. The race took place on May 16,...
. Rachel Alexandra
Rachel Alexandra
Rachel Alexandra is a retired American Thoroughbred filly racehorse and the 2009 Horse of the Year. She is renowned as the May 16, 2009 Preakness Stakes winner, the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the first filly to win the race in 85 years history...
would go on to win 2009 American Horse of the Year. She was bred to Curlin upon her retirement. Jackson's total investments in racehorses totaled over $200 million..