Such vertical integration "allows us to control the process all the way and the most important thing is right here in the vineyard," Jackson said.
Vintner's Reserve is Kendall-Jackson's best-known tier. The next tier up is Grand Reserve, which costs $20 to $24, and is made from more select grapes.
New this year is Kendall-Jackson Highland Estates, single-estate wines made from the family's best vineyards. At the top of the tree is the $95 Stature wine.
Jackson is known as the "mountain man" of California wine and a helicopter flight across his far-flung properties explains why. Some of his most treasured vineyards cling to rocky slopes looming above Napa and Sonoma counties.
Vines up here have to struggle to survive, producing a more luscious fruit in a Darwinian effort to propagate. Farmers have to work harder, too, negotiating the rough terrain and working with a narrow window of opportunity between ripe and too-ripe.
"Everything's desperate up here. The vine's desperate, the farmer's desperate," Jackson said with a laugh. "But when you get it, it's world-class."
Tall and strong-boned with a shock of white hair and the craggy looks of a frontiersman, Jackson isn't nearly as well-known as fellow wine legend Robert Mondavi, whose Robert Mondavi Corp. this month accepted a $1.03-billion buyout from Constellation Brands Inc. Yet in person, Jackson is engaging, launching into vivid descriptions of winemaking laced with a few scholarly discourses on history, another of his interests.
Born in Los Angeles, Jackson was raised in San Francisco and spent summers in wine country as a teenager, working as a lifeguard, picking grapes in those post-Depression days and learning to make wine from an Italian in-law.
As a young man, Jackson turned to drier pursuits, becoming an attorney in the San Francisco area specializing in land-use and property rights issues.
It was in the 1970s that Jackson returned to wine country, buying a ranch in Northern California.
The idea was to have a place to relax, but it wasn't long before Jackson was embarking on a second career.
"I returned to what I'd always loved," he said.
The company is a family affair with wife, Barbara Banke, serving as board chairwoman. A number of other family members are involved in the business, including the two daughters he had with first wife Jane Kendall. He also has three children, now teenagers, with Banke.
Over the years, Jackson's dogged pursuit of success has drawn both bouquets and barbs.
He's not shy of fighting to protect his company, taking on wine giant E. & J. Gallo in the 1990s with an ultimately unsuccessful suit claiming Gallo's Turning Leaf brand label copied Kendall-Jackson's autumn-leaf design.
Retirement notwithstanding, Jackson is thoroughly involved in the brand overhaul, says Kendall-Jackson spokesman George Rose.
"This man's driven and he's demanding and at 74 he's the hardest-working man in the company," said Rose. "It's a fascinating experience to be around a whirlwind. Somebody said, 'Thank God he's 74 because he would be killing us if he was 50.' "
