Edward Humes - A Man and His Mountain: The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became Americas Greatest Wine Entrepreneur

A MAN and HIS MOUNTAIN

A MAN and HIS MOUNTAIN

The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became Americas Greatest Wine Entrepreneur

Edward Humes

PublicAffairs New York

Copyright 2013 by Edward Humes

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Book design by Pauline Brown Typeset in 11-point Bauer Bodini by the Perseus Books Group

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Humes, Edward.

A man and his mountain : the everyman who created Kendall-Jackson and became Americas greatest wine entrepreneur / Edward Humes.First edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-285-3 (hardcover : alkaline paper)ISBN 978-1-61039-286-0 (e-book) 1. Jackson, Jess Stonestreet, 19302011. 2. VintnersCaliforniaBiography. 3. BusinessmenCaliforniaBiography. 4. Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates (Firm)History. 5. Wine and wine makingCaliforniaHistory. I. Title.

TP547.J22H86 2013

663'.20092dc23

[B]

2013020106

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Donna, Gaby, and Eben, Slinte, Budem, Lchaim, Cheers!

CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

Prologue

Catch Me If You Can

chapter 1

Diving In

chapter 2

First Pour: Glut and Stuck

chapter 3

The Street-Smart Farm Boy

chapter 4

The Oyster Bar and Nancys Wine

chapter 5

Joe Goodguy of the Berkeley PD

chapter 6

Bending and Blending

chapter 7

The New King of Wine Country Meets His Match

chapter 8

Birth of a Terroir ist

chapter 9

VRU and the Hard C

chapter 10

Gallo, Gall, Greens, and Growth: Jess Jackson at War

chapter 11

Family Man, Part IIand the Retirement That Didnt Stick

chapter 12

Bluegrass Hurricane: Mr. Jacksons Wild Ride

chapter 13

The Vineyard by the Owl House

Epilogue

In Vino Veritas

Acknowledgments

Index

Prologue

Catch Me If You Can

He watches Rachel walk past, mere minutes now before her big moment. Their moment. She doesnt spot him in the crowd, but he is transfixed. For what seems the hundredth time in their still-new relationship, he feels the tightening at the back of his throat at the mere sight of her. Even at his age, his wavy hair reduced to gray stubble, he squares his shoulders and stands a little straighter in unconscious response to her lithe grace, her shining, impossible youth. He can scarcely believe Rachel is his, yet there she walks, dressed in the gold that he picked out for her, exquisite in the afternoon sun.

Jess Stonestreet Jackson is not a man who casually reveals his heart. Even those closest to himespecially those closest to himknow this all too well. This beat cop turned billionaire, this gentlemanly cutthroat wine mogul, has made his friends, his employees, his children, and his wives into Wine Country Kremlinologists. Always they must labor to crack his code, to puzzle out the meaning of a glance or frown or too-broad grin. Only Rachel lays him bare. Years after this morning has passed, recalling how she looked, that perfect moment, Jesss voice will crack. His eyes will well. He had arrived with her certain they would make history that day. Amid a chorus of doubters, he had been sure of it.

And if there was one thing Jess Jackson loved even more than Rachel, it was showing a dubious world that he was right.

The Preakness Stakes transforms Baltimore . Once a year this blue-collar port town gives way to the pomp and ritual of one of the oldest sporting events in America, the middle leg of the storied Triple Crown, the Super Bowl of horse racing. Here he would make his stand, an occasion marked by a full week of hot-air balloon races, footraces, pub crawls, parades, live music throughout town, and endless arrangements of bright yellow black-eyed Susans, the state flower and the symbol of the Preakness. Culminating with the legendary stakes race at Pimlico Park, the Preakness has been Baltimores biggest annual celebration since Ulysses S. Grant called the White House home back in 1873.

In 2008 Jess Jackson brought two things to this party: an impossible horse and a very large bodyguard.

Both horse and guard were results of Jacksons penchant for defying tradition and irritating the rich, powerful, and entrenched. This child of the Depression who worked his way through school as a dishwasher, lumberjack, ambulance driver, fashion model, Teamster, stevedore, and cop had little in common with the gentry of Horse Country, who certainly viewed him as a barbarian. But that hadnt stopped him from using his California Wine Country millions to snap up farms, fillies, and fans. In the same daring, risky, convention-defying way he had built a faltering little winery called Kendall-Jackson into an empire that quite literally put Chardonnay on Americas tables, Jackson had, after a few initial disasters, become the most successful new racehorse owner in half a century.

This was not supposed to happen. Corporate scions and other assorted rich guys were always showing up in Horse Country (and Wine Country, for that matter) certain their mad business skills would set them apart. The old guard with the blue grass and blue blood found it highly entertaining because the newcomers invariably skulked away with egos and wallets deflated. And yet here, infuriatingly, was Jess Jackson, transforming a staid and insular thoroughbred industry against its will, as he had previously done in the wine business. He flouted convention. He denounced the corruption others pretended not to see. Worse, he was not just a California winemaking interloper; he was, of all things, a lawyer, too, and he would never be forgiven by the old guard for suing the pants off famous (and, thanks to Jackson, infamous) horsemen for cheating him. Hence the death threats that prompted the bodyguard, along with backroom attempts to block him from entering this marquee race. The obstructionists failed in the end, although Jacksons horse was stuck in the absolute worst starting position possible, a handicap no other horse had ever overcome.

But this time the horse was Rachel Alexandra, a three-year-old filly in the midst of one of the great racing campaigns in the history of the sport. Her previous race just two weeks before, the Kentucky Oaks, had set her apart. That racea $500,000 contest at Churchill Downs for three-year-old fillies held on the day before the Kentucky Derbyhad stunned racing fans as Rachel won by more than twenty lengths, by far the largest margin of victory in the history of that race. Jackson had been a spectator, not an owner, for that one, but after he saw Rachel run, he had to have her. He was one of the four hundred richest men in the world at that point, and no price was really beyond hima thought that, after so many years, still startled him when he took the time to reflect on it, still etched his broad face not with pride but with something that looked very much like discomfort. He had never lost the poor kids unease at spending, the idea that thriftiness, not lavishness, was the thing to be admired. This was a guy who still wore his grandfathers hand-me-down boots, after all. Plenty of wear left in them, hed grouse when someone asked him about the broken-down old things. So for a long time he wouldnt say how much he had paid for Rachel, pretending it was a secret deal of some sort when in fact he was simply embarrassed. When he finally admitted the price tag had been $10 million, he looked sheepish but confessed no regrets. She was, he would say in a tremulous tone, as he if he were explaining how he had come to possess the Mona Lisa or achieved the summit at Everest, worth every penny. And to him, Rachel was his latest Mona Lisa, and the campaign he had designed for her was his latest mountaintop.