While wines from Jack London Vineyard mirror the rugged vitality of the writer himself, his namesake vineyard had a history in vines well before London’s arrival in the Sonoma Valley. J.A. Poppe planted the original vineyard on the 130-acre property – a total of 20 acres, most of them Zinfandel - in the early 1870’s and built a small winery nearby. Poppe died in 1879, but his widow and son, C.J. Poppe, continued to farm the vineyard and make wine from its grapes into the 1890’s. The property was then sold to William McPherson Hill, a pioneer Sonoma Valley vintner.

Jack London discovered the charms of the Sonoma Valley in 1903, the same year Call of the Wild, the book that established his reputation, was published. He first came to the Valley to court Charmian Kittredge.  When he and Charmian married in 1905, he purchased the beautiful Hill Ranch.  “There are 130 acres in the place, and they are 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California,” London wrote in a letter to a friend. Over the next eight years, London purchased six adjacent properties to create his 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch. Carefully terraced under London’s supervision, the Hill Ranch portion of the property produced grapes and hay and provided an inspiring view from his writing den in the cottage that became the couple’s home in 1911. Several of the author’s later books were written at Beauty Ranch, including Burning Daylight and The Valley of the Moon.

During London’s frequent travels, London’s stepsister, Eliza Shepard, managed Beauty Ranch. Upon his untimely death in 1916 at age 40, she took over management full-time. The vineyard and hayfield were left fallow due to World War I and the advent of Prohibition, but Shepard and her descendants kept Beauty Ranch intact until 1959, four years after Charmian London’s death, when the family donated land for establishment of Jack London State Park.

In 1972, Milo Shepard, Eliza Shepard’s grandson, planted Jack London Vineyard on the Hill Ranch portion of the property, which remains under family ownership. A substantial percentage of the vineyard was established on the old terraces London built. The superb quality of the first Cabernet Sauvignon vintage motivated neighboring Kenwood Vineyards to enter an exclusive agreement to purchase the grapes from Jack London Vineyard.

Jack London Cabernet Sauvignon, with a label featuring London’s “Wolf” bookplate logo, debuted with the 1976 vintage. As new grape plantings reached maturity, Kenwood Vineyards produced additional Jack London Vineyard bottlings: Jack London Zinfandel was introduced with the 1987 vintage and Jack London Merlot with the 1990 vintage.

Today, Kenwood Vineyards manages Jack London Vineyard, farming and harvesting to achieve optimal grape quality in the wines that bear its name. Now fully planted, the vineyard encompasses 65 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon, 30 acres of Zinfandel, 20 acres of Merlot, 7 acres of Syrah and 3 acres of Cabernet Franc. The superb quality of Jack London Vineyard wines has made them both consistent medal winners at wine competitions and among the most successful single-vineyard series in California wine history.