People : Randy Ullom

By: Anthony Gismondi

Kendall-Jackson's winemaster talks chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon.

People

There are a lot of winemakers in Vancouver this week at the 40th Vancouver International; Wine Festival but few if any come with the knowledge and experience of Kendall-Jackson’s Winemaster Randy Ullom.

The 65-year-old Ullom is a senior vice president and chief winemaker responsible for the entire Kendall-Jackson portfolio as well as the company’s Chilean operations. Ullom oversees 12,800 acres of estate vineyards, all coastal and all cool, divided evenly between North Coast, Monterey and Santa Barbara counties. ‘K-J’ as its referred to is part of an even larger Jackson Family Wines portfolio of wineries and brands making 6 million cases annually in multiple countries. Over the last twenty years Ullom has been the rock at K-J balancing the need to be progressive and move forward but never taking his eye off the consumers that have made Kendall-Jackson so successful. We caught up with Ullom inside the International Tasting Room to ask about his chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and the new VR rosé.

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Anthony Gismondi

Anthony Gismondi is a Canadian wine journalist and one of North America's most influential voices in wine. For over 30 years, he has been the wine columnist for The Vancouver Sun. The twice-weekly column is distributed across Canada through the Postmedia Network to millions of readers. In addition, Anthony hosts the BC Food & Wine Radio Show, broadcast in 25 markets across B.C. and available as a podcast on major platforms. He launched Gismondionwine.com in 1997, attracting one million monthly users from 114 countries. It continues to be a valuable resource full of tasting notes, intelligent wine stories and videos for the trade and consumers. Conversations with wine personalities are available on his YouTube Channel.