A team of experts was called in to fix things, but the stuck fermentation stayed stuck. Jackson was advised to sell the sweet juice on the bulk market and make separate wines from the grapes from other vineyards, which had fermented properly. He said no. Others counseled declaring bankruptcy. “That's not going to happen," was Jackson's response, recounted in his 2013 biography, A Man and His Mountain written by Edward Humes.




There was a lot on the line.

Jackson, whose varied working life included stints as a policeman, ambulance driver and lumberjack, had built up a successful and lucrative career as a civil lawyer before buying an 80-acre pear and walnut orchard in rural Lakeport, California, in 1974 with an eye to retirement. But the planned relaxation had soon turned into an absorbing passion. He planted grapes, at first just to sell to other vintners. Then a grape glut in the early '80s left him with grapes on his hands, and he invested heavily in building his own winery.

Facing disaster, Jackson came up with a third option: Make one wine out of all the grapes, including the stuck fermentation.

He believed that U.S. consumers were ready for a slightly sweeter white wine, and for a wine that was somewhere in between the $2 jug wines at the bottom of the market and the $15 premium wines and European imports at the top. “I saw a hole in the market you could drive a truck through," he told Wine & Spirits in a 2008 interview.

He decided to price the wine at just under $5. And he sold it not as coming from a specific region, e.g. Santa Barbara or Lake County, but as a statewide blend labeled simply “Californian." Defying his advisers, who were horrified at the idea, Jackson declared his Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay would be “a superblend, something never before presented to the American public," writes Humes in A Man and His Mountain. “I'm betting on this," Jackson told his team. “I'm betting everything. Because it's delicious."
In the end, around 16,000 cases were ready for market. The question was, would they sell?

Jackson decided there was one place to find out and that was New York City. So, there he went, selling to bars, wine shops and restaurants a case at a time. Meanwhile, the wine started picking up medals at competitions, winning a Platinum Award, a first for an U.S. Chardonnay, at the American Wine Competition and getting top honors at the 1983 Los Angeles County Fair. 

The wine caught the attention of then-First Lady Nancy Reagan, and KJ was poured at the White House, prompting a flurry of publicity. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called the Vintner's Reserve “Nancy's Wine." 

Within six months, the '82 vintage had sold out and KJ Vintner's Reserve was on its way to becoming America's leading Chardonnay.

In subsequent years, KJ used blending techniques, not stuck fermentations, to come up with the Vintner's Reserve profile and in the early 2000s, the wine was revamped to be a little crisper, evolving along with consumers' palates.

Jackson, a prominent figure in wine country with his tall, rangy figure and shock of white hair, died in 2011. But the company remains a family affair, run by his wife, Barbara Banke, and a second generation of Jacksons. 

Today, Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay remains a top seller, part of a deep portfolio from Jackson Family Wines that include a host of award-winning reds and whites including some high-end premium bottles.

And the roots of that success can be traced to what seemed at the time like a serious setback… and to the man savvy enough to see that it was anything but.

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