Jed Steele, one of California’s more influential winemakers during the industry’s rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s, died Oct. 31, 2025. Steele had been battling bladder cancer; he was 80.
Steele was the initial winemaking consultant at Kendall-Jackson, and he made the first vintages of Vintner’s Reserve, the most popular Chardonnay sold in America. An early pioneer in winegrowing in Lake and Mendocino Counties as well, he earned the nickname “Mr. Lake County.” After leaving Kendall-Jackson, Steele managed his own eponymous winery before selling it in 2020.
“He lived a long and full life and was liked and admired by all in the industry who knew him,” said vintner David Ramey. “His two great accomplishments were pioneering Lake County wine and bottling the first KJ Chardonnay with some residual sugar. That was really his lasting impact—Americans talk dry but drink sweet.”
Grapegrower Andy Beckstoffer got to know Steele through his work in Lake County. “Jed Steele was a gentleman,” said Beckstoffer. “He made a huge impact with that KJ Chardonnay. And nobody knew anything about Lake County, except Jed Steele said it is a good place to grow grapes.” Beckstoffer followed that advice and today owns 1,800 acres of vineyards in the Red Hills appellation there.
“He really connected with people through wine,” said Steele’s son Quincy, who worked alongside his father on their brand Writer’s Block.
Opting for Wine over Psychology
Jedediah Tecumseh Steele was born Jan. 26, 1945, in New York City. He was five years old when his family moved to San Francisco. His father was a newspaper reporter and wine aficionado who introduced his son to wine. Steele earned a basketball scholarship and attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, where he majored in psychology.
In 1968, Steele worked his first of two harvests at Stony Hill Vineyard in Napa Valley while also working as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad. He spent a brief period working as an intern in a mental hospital, ultimately deciding that he did not want to pursue a career in psychology. He took jobs as a waiter and bartender.
During this time, Steele began to consider wine more seriously. “There was a lot of corporate investment in vineyards at the time,” he told Wine Spectator in 1997. So Steele enrolled at the University of California at Davis and received a master’s degree in enology in 1975. Before he even graduated, he was hired by Edmeades Winery in Mendocino County, where he spent the next eight years making wine.
Fix the Chardonnay
In 1982, budding vintner Jess Jackson, taking advantage of a grape surplus, was planning to bottle eight different Chardonnays from vineyards up and down the state. But some of the fermentations became “stuck,” unable to convert all of their sugars into alcohol, leaving the wine lightly sweet. Steele was taking a sabbatical at the time but agreed to consult with Jackson for 90 days. He ended up staying until 1990.
“There were some really good lots—Mr. Jackson had bought some good grapes,” Steele told Wine Spectator in 2022. “When I came upon [the stuck fermentations], I wasn’t worried about them,” he added, knowing at the time some of his contemporaries would typically leave their white wines a little sweet to add fullness.
Jackson asked Steele to put together a blend of all the grapes they had on hand—the eight separate bottlings would become a single wine, and the sweet lots would be mixed in with the lots that had fermented dry. The blend was primarily Chardonnay, but some lots made with other grapes—Chenin Blanc and a rosé of Gamay—were also blended in.
The 1982 Kendall-Jackson California Chardonnay was listed as a “Vintner’s Reserve” on the side label. Steele recalled that Jackson told him to bottle all 16,000 cases worth of wine, but only label about 20 percent of production in case sales lagged. It only took a few weeks for Jackson to sell what he had. The Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay was an instant hit. Within a decade, production exceeded a million cases a year. According to Wine Spectator sister publication Impact Databank, it has been the most popular Chardonnay sold in America from 1992 to 2022 by value.
Winemaker Ric Forman was also instrumental in the start of KJ’s Vintner’s Reserve and worked with Steele. “I started it, but it was Jed who perfected it and was so very instrumental in catapulting the KJ brand to fame and success,” said Forman. “He possessed bold and self-assured ideas about how great wine should be made, a trait that matched his physical presence.”
Life After KJ
Steele left Kendall-Jackson in 1991 to become a consultant while starting his own eponymous brand. Things soured with his exit, as Steele sued for money owed while Jackson countersued, accusing Steele of various breaches, including revealing trade secrets of the KJ Chardonnay program. A judge ruled in Jackson’s favor.
Steele set up in Lake County with then-wife Marie Beery. Steele Wines became well-known for its Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel bottlings. In 1997, while presenting at the Wine Spectator California Wine Experience in San Francisco, Steele described Lake County as a sleepy region he calls home. “When I first came here [in 1983], there were two stoplights in the county,” Steele said proudly. “Now there are five.”
“He championed a lot of small independent winegrowers in Lake and Mendocino,” said Quincy. Steele made a practice of seeking out growers in lesser-known regions and promoted them by showcasing their vineyards. Before it was common, he was making small-lot, single-vineyard designated wines. He later discovered Santa Barbara’s Bien Nacido vineyard and added wines made from it to his lineup. Following a stroke, Steele sold his winery to Shannon’s Family of Wines in 2020, including the inventory and brand.
A Legacy of Kindness
Besides bringing national attention to Lake and Mendocino counties, Steele left an impact for his kindness and efforts in educating and mentoring. “One of the things my father had an impact on nationally was working outside major wine markets, in smaller markets,” said Quincy. “This was a lot of wine education and appreciation in areas most winemakers were not yet visiting.”
His current partner, Paula Doran, expands on this point. “I was fortunate enough to travel with him for the last 14 years. There were many winemaker dinners. He had a habit of putting business cards under dinner plates. Whoever had one would get a large bottle of wine from Jed. If the server was particularly attentive, he would get their name and address and send them a bottle of wine.”
His enthusiasm for wine was a big part of his personality. “For the last 30 years of his life he drove a series of red Toyotas with JEDSRED on the plates,” said his daughter Mendocino. “Though he did have another plate, ZINMAKR, in case there was any question about where his loyalties lay with respect to reds.”
Steele is survived by his partner, Doran, his former wife, Beery, his children, Quincy, Mendocino and Benicia, a nephew and a granddaughter.
—With reporting by James Molesworth
