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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A longtime Lake County resident who became a titan in the California wine industry for his innovation and human touch will be remembered in a special event at the end of this month.
Jed Steele died Oct. 31 at his Kelseyville home, surrounded by his family and friends. He was 80 years old.
His family will host a celebration of his life and legacy on Saturday, Jan. 31, at 1 p.m. at The Mercantile, 4350 Thomas Drive in Lakeport – formerly the site of his famed winery.
Steele was famed for a decades-long career in the wine industry that included his creation – albeit accidentally – of what became the industry standard chardonnay recipe. That wine would later be at the heart of a lawsuit that had a longtime impact on the winemaking industry.
He founded Steele Wines, a company with a portfolio of wines including Shooting Star, Stymie and Writer's Block that amassed a lengthy list of awards.
“He was a huge part” of establishing Lake County as a wine region, said Shannon Gunier, a noted wine industry consultant who also was a founder and longtime executive director for the Lake County Winegrape Association.
Gunier called Steele “the rock star of Lake County” who put Lake County and the North Coast on the map nationally for grape growing and winemaking.
“Everybody knew Jed,” she said, noting he was a kind and impeccable winemaker, and a mentor.
His longtime partner, Paula Doran, said he was like the godfather of wine, who was known to help others in the small local wine community.
“The whole thing about Jed is how he cared about people,” Doran said.
“Jed was a dear friend whose presence filled every room. He was larger than life in stature and spirit. His vision and hard work helped put Lake County’s vineyards on the map. I’m grateful to have known him and to honor his memory,” Congressman Mike Thompson said in a statement released after Steele’s death.
An early fascination with wine
He was born Jedediah Tecumseh Steele in New York City on Jan. 26, 1945, the last of five children born to Robert and Frances Steele. The family later moved to San Francisco.
Doran said that by the time Jed Steele was born, his parents were older and his father had retired as a copywriter.
Robert Steele completed 13 historical fiction novels. Doran said he wrote at home in the morning, and in the afternoons he would go and work on finding dinner before cooking it up. The family also often had parties, with Frances Steele going so far as to pull people in off the street to enjoy meals served with nice wine.
“Jed got into that,” Doran said.
Jed Steele grew into what friends and family recalled as a “gentle giant,” standing 6 feet 4 inches tall with size 15 shoes and a mild demeanor.
As he grew up in San Francisco, his family said he spent his childhood exploring the city by bicycle, delivering newspapers at dawn and excelling in school.
Thanks in part to his big stature, he went to Gonzaga University on a basketball scholarship. During that time took a year away to coach Native Alaskan students, leading them to their first-ever championship and celebrating as they carried him on their shoulders, a moment he cherished for the rest of his life, his family said.
Later, following the interest in wine cultivated by his parents, Steele worked with some friends at a Napa winery. He also traveled for a time before enrolling at the University of California, Davis, where he was among the first members of classes on wine.
“He went to school with a lot of big names,” Doran said.
Those names included other winemaking legends Merry Edwards and Tim Mondavi.
He earned his Master of Science in food science in 1976. He worked at Edmeades Winery in Geyservville before joining Kendall-Jackson in Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, working for Jess Jackson.
“He liked the rural lifestyle,” and decided to stay in the area, Doran said.
With Kendall-Jackson in the 1980s, Steele helped expand the winery from 20,000 cases a year to nearly a million. During that time, he developed the recipe for the Vintner's Reserve chardonnay, which became a hit nationally and a favorite of then-First Lady Nancy Reagan.
In 1990, he won International Winemaker of the Year in London.
In 1991, he left Kendall-Jackson to found Steele Wines, which his family said “he guided with heart, humor, and vision until its sale in 2020 to Shannon Family of Wines.”
It was after the founding of Steele Wines that the working relationship between Steele and Jackson was permanently ruptured – over unpaid money and the recipe for the Vintner's Reserve chardonnay.
As Gunier explained, the winemaking industry in California was maturing, after having only taken off again starting in the 1960s. People in the industry were cooperative and shared ideas to try to make it successful.
Doran said Jackson and Steele had a handshake deal, with Jackson having told Steele that, in 10 years, they would both be millionaires. Later, Steele went to Jackson to tell him that while he was a millionaire, Steele was not.
At that point, she said Steele decided to leave and asked for severance pay. Jackson only made one payment.
In what became a landmark case, Steele sued Jackson for the rest of the severance money he was owed, and Jackson, a successful property rights attorney, countersued Steele, alleging that the chardonnay recipe that Steele developed by accident – due to accidentally leaving residual sugar in some chardonnay that created a wine that people loved – was proprietary and belonged to him, not to Steele. Further, he accused Steele of taking that recipe with him, along with grape suppliers.
Gunier and Doran said the ultimate court decision was a split one, with Steele getting some money and Jackson getting the recipe.
After the lawsuit, everyone quit sharing, Gunier said. “It changed the wine business,” adding that it made people “very secretive.”
A new era for Lake County wine
Despite the lawsuit, Steele had a long and successful career yet to come in the wine industry.
For the first four years of his new company, Doran said Steele made his wine at Ployez Winery in Lower Lake and at Wildhurst in Kelseyville before buying the building on the corner of Highway 29 and Thomas Drive in 1995.
During his tenure at Steele Wines, he also consulted for Northstar, Fess Parker, Indian Springs, Lolonis Vineyards and Wildhurst Vineyards.
“No one makes wine like Jed Steele,” said Gunier, and he went about creating a catalog of award-winning wines.
At about the same time as Steele was turning his full attention to his new Lake County winery, Gunier and her husband, Rick, were working to establish the new winegrape commission. That process involved talking to local industry members.
Gunier said that at that time, Lake County wines were “the blend,” the additional grapes added to wine made in other areas. She and her husband, however, believed they were as good as the grapes from Napa and Sonoma, yet weren’t getting as much enthusiasm to put Lake County on the map. Additionally, Kendall-Jackson had just closed their tasting room in Lakeport.
So the Guniers asked Steele to come and talk to their second annual commission dinner at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Lakeport.
Gunier recalled the building had bats. She said Steele stood up to talk – with bats flying around his head – and spoke words that resulted in a personal epiphany for Gunier.
“You all have to decide – does Lake County want to be on the front of the label or on the back of the label?” She remembered him saying.
He emphasized that at that point, Lake County was on the back of the label.
The resulting epiphany led to the building of a strategic plan based on the goal of leading the region, Gunier said.
“He was really the impetus for that,” she said. “I knew that he loved Lake County so much.”
She said he was always kind and helpful, mentored many winemakers, sent people bottles of wine, T-shirts and gifts certificates, and could be asked anything. “People just really adored him.”
He was known well beyond Lake County, the North Coast and California. Gunier said a local winemaker tells a story of visiting New Zealand, where she wanted to work. In her conversation with a potential employer, she saw that he had a magazine featuring Steele, with whom she’d worked. She got the job.
In an obituary provided by his family, they wrote, “For nearly three decades, he poured his soul into crafting first-class, award-winning wines, building friendships across the country and bringing meaningful recognition to Lake County’s viticulture. Jed fostered a true family atmosphere at his winery – holiday turkeys and Christmas trees for employees, scholarship funds for new babies, and kids and winery pups growing up between the barrels. He supported and taught countless people in the wine world at every level, including many Lake County winemakers and professionals across the country – among them his son Quincy, who is currently working at wineries in France and Switzerland.”
Beyond his wines, Steele became known for the bowling tournaments, the baseball and golf games, the cornhole contests, and the legendary wine dinners that always sold out simply because he was there.
His family said he had a remarkable gift for making people feel seen – remembering names, birthdays and even a child’s ballet recital – and he took genuine joy in people.
Doran said that when they traveled, first thing every single morning he would sit down and send 20 thank you notes. “That’s how he started his day.”
Steele and Doran met when he came to her Clearlake lamp shop, Clayton Creek Studios. Later, she was at the Saw Shop in Kelseyville – when it was owned by his ex-wife Marie Beery – and Doran said she heard him and Clay Shannon talking about a crush contest.
She said she wanted to do it, and Steele replied that it was hard work. Doran, in turn, said she is a hard worker and decided to work the crush that year. Afterward, he asked her out, and they spent the next 14 years together.
Those were great years and she and Steele enjoyed “a very special romance,” Doran said.
She recalled that Steele was a “big yellow legal pad kind of guy” who, as an employer, liked to make people lists.
He tried giving her a list. She said she gave it back. He was, apparently, OK with that.
Doran said Steele was a normal guy who would rather spend $1,000 taking people to dinner rather than working on his house. He loved baseball games, fishing and golfing.
During their time together, they traveled extensively. One of the things she said she loved about him was his interest in things she liked to do. She is a scuba diver and he wanted to learn to dive as well – but first he had to learn to swim. During a trip to the Bahamas, he did just that.
On their first cruise together, he booked a dancing cruise so they could learn to dance together.
“He brought me into his world of wine dinners,” she said, and he liked to go and spend time with people who he knew in the wine business.
Six months of the year they were away from Lake County, visiting homes in Montana, where they liked to go on annual pack trips, and in Florida.
“I was lucky. I got to meet him when he was slowing down and wanting to do some traveling,” when he wanted to do life differently, Doran said. “I feel like I had the best years with him.”
In 2020, Steele sold his operation to Shannon Ridge, owned by Clay Shannon.
“That did mark his retirement,” said Doran.
Shannon has since turned the Steele Wines facility into The Mercantile, a popular wine and entertainment venue where Steele’s memorial event will be held.
As a winemaker, Gunier said Steele was in a class of his own, and nobody had his rock star quality.
“He’s just a real legend,” she said.
With all of Steele’s many accomplishments, his family said he considered his greatest achievement to be being a father to Mendocino and Quincy, and he was thrilled to become a grandfather when granddaughter Astrid arrived.
Steele was preceded in death by his parents, Robert and Frances; his sisters, Clelia, Theodora and Judy; and his brother Johnny.
Survivors include Doran; his children, Mendocino and Quincy; and his granddaughter, Astrid.
To RSVP for the Jan. 31 memorial, please email
Email Elizabeth Larson at
