By Rick VanSickle
A visionary and giant of the Canadian wine industry, Allan Jackson, has passed away.
Note: Celebration of Life for Allan details at the bottom of this post.
“Few people have shaped the Canadian wine industry as profoundly as Allan Jackson,” Arterra Canada wrote on LinkedIn today. “As one of the founders of Jackson-Triggs (along with Donald Triggs), and an instrumental force behind what would become Arterra Wines Canada, Allan brought vision, passion, and deep respect for craftsmanship to everything he did. His contributions are part of the foundation of our company and our industry.”
Del Rollo, VP corporate affairs for Arterra Canada, said: “This one hurts … AJ was one of the reasons I came to this amazing industry. I had the distinct pleasure of working with him when we launched the Jackson-Triggs Winery in 2000/2001 and spent many years learning from this amazing man. He was a mentor, an educator, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a winemaker, a colleague and most of all, friend. We have all learned so much from Allan over the years. He helped blaze a trail for our Canadian grape and wine industry and we are all grateful for his vision.
“My thoughts are with Wendy and the family at this time. I have stocked the fridge with Gewurztraminer (his favourite) and will be cracking open a few bottles this weekend to toast my friend, AJ.”
“Jackson leaves behind a legacy of excellence that continues to guide us today,” Arterra said in its statement. “He built this legacy alongside his wife Wendy, who also worked with us and shared deeply in his passion for this industry. We are grateful for everything Allan contributed to this community and for the lasting impact he has had on generations of winemakers, viticulturists, and wine lovers. Allan’s impact will never be forgotten.”
Jackson and Triggs started the company Vincor International (now known as Arterra Wines Canada) in 1989 when they acquired the wine division of John Labatt. Their company, formed from management buyouts and mergers with historical wineries like T.G. Bright & Co., built the largest wine company in Canada before being acquired by Constellation Brands, which was eventually sold to Arterra and includes the brands Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin, Domaine Le Clos Jordanne and many others across the country.
The seeds for Vincor were sown in 1989 when Triggs and Jackson bought Ridout Wines (where Triggs had been president until 1982), the wine division of the Canadian brewing company John Labatt, Inc.
Labatt wanted to get out of the wine Canadian business that, at the time, was predicting a dramatic loss of market share due to recent free trade laws that foreshadowed an influx of lower priced imported wines flooding the market.
Jackson had been VP of operations at Chateau Gai, then under the Labatt umbrella, and he, along with Triggs orchestrated the management buyout.
The growing team then set their sights on quickly building the Canadian company with acquisitions and mergers to build cash flow and pay down the debt (which they did within two years) incurred by buying Ridout.
Niagara author Linda Bramble, in her book Niagara’s Wine Visionaries, said in her chapter on Triggs and Jackon:
“Triggs always saw the future in premium wines. Being a pragmatist, he figured there were two ways of developing that vision: by developing their own brands and vineyards or by acquiring or merging with the best premium wineries that they could afford to buy.”
Triggs and Jackson chose to pursue both segments of the market under their new company they named Cartier Wines. First, they attacked the higher-end market when they merged with Niagara’s Inniskillin Wines, founded and owned at the time by Donald Ziraldo and Karl Kaiser. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement — Inniskillin gained a broader retail presence and Cartier established itself in the premium and ultra-premium wine category.
The company was renamed Cartier-Inniskillin Vintners and the big job of producing enough wine to feed the bottom line began in earnest.
The next major hurdle for Cartier-Inniskillin was the reverse buyout of Brights, which owned considerable wineries in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. It would be a difficult merger melding two very different cultures, but when the smoke cleared, wrote Bramble, the company had changed its name to Vincor Canada and now had “significant efficiencies of production and scale and a massive and dynamic sales force across the country.”
In 1993, Vincor established the Jackson-Triggs brand. The winery initially produced only two wines, a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon. The wines were made partly with Ontario grapes, supplemented by grapes from Chile and California. The wines were an immediate hit, and over the next five years the brand became one of the top 10 bestselling in Canada. The winery wasn’t built in Niagara-on-the-Lake until 2001 and would become the largest VQA brand in Canada, selling 250,000 cases annually at the time.
When Vincor went public in 1996, raising $40 million at $8 a share, the acquisitions came swiftly: London Winery, R.J. Grape, Spagnols, Hawthorne Mountain (bought by Harry McWatters and renamed See Ya Later Ranch) and Sumac Ridge (founded and owned by McWatters).
It also developed Le Clos Jordanne (in partnership with Boisset, and the Okanagan’s Osoyoos Larose (in partnership with Groupe Taillan). The Le Clos brand is still going strong with its own estate on the Beamsville Bench while Osoyoos Larose was sold.
It then moved on to the international wine community buying R.H. Phillip, Hogue Cellars, Goundry, Kim Crawford and, perhaps its undoing, the South African brand Kumala.
As Bramble said, “hardly a year went by that they didn’t mark with an acquisition.”
It was selling one out of every 4.5 bottles of wine sold in Canada by 1999. It would rise to become the fourth-largest wine company in the North America and the seventh largest in the world at its peak.
Then the big blip; shares plunged 13% in 2005 following disappointing numbers from Kumala. Waiting in the wings like a tiger stalking its prey, was the largest wine company in the world, Constellation Brands, which wasted no time in launching a hostile bid to acquire Vincor for $31 a share, a deal worth $1.4 billion.
It was an unwanted bid to buy Vincor, but Triggs and Jackson outsmarted Constellation CEO Richard Sands, and convinced shareholders the company was worth much more than that. Vincor knew it was doomed; all that was left was getting the best possible price from the hostile takeover.
On June 1, 2006, Vincor was officially sold to Constellation brands for $36.50 a share plus a 15% dividend. The dream was over, but the profit from the original $8 shares enabled a lot of new dreams to be born. The man whose name is immortalized in one of Canada’s largest wineries, Jackson-Triggs in Niagara-on-the-Lake, stayed on with Vincor Canada under the new owners for four years as vice-president of research and development. He told Wines in Niagara at the time that his main focus and impetus was as an advocate for the J-T winery around the boardroom table.
Jackson officially retired in 2009 but that only lasted five months. “There’s only so much golf and curling you can do,” Jackson told me on a phone call from Florida.
He quickly teamed up with former Vincor account manager Andrew von Teichman (above), who left to start his own wine agency called Von Terra Enterprises.
Jackson and von Teichman created the Generations Wine Company and under the label Union sold wines exclusively to the LCBO and restaurants as a “virtual” winery.
The concept has had phenomenal success. The first wine released at the LCBO was the most successful debut ever for a new VQA wine.
Union was essentially a series of multi-variety blends made from 100% VQA grapes in Niagara. Union started with a White and a Red and added a Union Noir (Gamay/Pinot), Union Rose, a higher-end Union Squared Red and White for Vintages. The duo also established the popular D’Ont Poke the Bear brand, which was sold to Diamond Estates Wines and spirits and is still finding success through Creekside and at the LCBO.
Jackson took the demise of Vincor in stride but was pragmatic about it when discussed with Wines in Niagara. “The challenge is ‘how are you going to realize your value?’ When you’re the seventh largest wine company in the world it means there are six companies ahead of you that want to buy you out,” he says looking back.
Of starting his newest venture, Jackson said: “It’s just been a heck of a lot of fun.”
Celebration of Life details
Friends are welcome to join the family at a Celebration of Life at the Chateau Des Charmes Winery (1025 York Road, Niagara-On-The-Lake), on Saturday, October 25, 2025, from 3-6 p.m. Please arrive for 3:00 and speeches will begin at approximately 3:30.
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