Jed Steele has been making wine commercially for 43 years. He may be best known as the winemaker who in the early 1980s left some residual sugar in a batch of chardonnay at Kendall-Jackson Vineyards & Winery.

At the time, chardonnay generally was made dry, without apparent sweetness.

Nevertheless, he was stuck with the wine and he released it. Much to the surprise of industry insiders, consumers concluded that they liked a little sugar in their chardonnay, and Kendall-Jackson's Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay went on to become the country's most popular take on the varietal, establishing a template for countless other wineries to follow.

Steele, however, left Kendall-Jackson after nine years and in 1991 established his own winery, Steele Wines.

It's at Kelseyville, on the west side of Clear Lake, in Lake County. Though Lake County's grape-growing and winemaking heritage goes back more than a century, it's still trying to establish a positive reputation and avid following for itself.

That Steele would choose such an underappreciated region for his winery isn't surprising, given his rugged individualism, his frontier spirit (his full name is Jedediah Tecumseh Steele) and his conviction that Lake County has all it needs to yield fine wines.

Besides, he's always enjoyed longshots. Since early on, he's been keen on one of California's less glamorous varietals, zinfandel, whose stature he's helped raise through releases from cherished old vineyards he's helped preserve. And he's never been shy about making wine from even more obscure varieties, such as lemberger, aligoté and counoise, showing that even they can develop fans and find secure niches in his portfolio.

Given his gumption, then, it's surprising to hear a fellow winemaker call Steele "old school," even if she said it with affection rather than disdain. After all, she's been working alongside Steele for eight years.

That would be Joy Merrilees, assistant winemaker at Steele Wines, or as her business cards put it: "crazy chick in rubber boots."

As to her "old school" remark, Merrilees was talking specifically about a sauvignon blanc that Steele Wines makes under a second label, the Jed Steele's Shooting Star 2010 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc.

"I'd been bugging him for years, poking him in the side, saying that our sauvignon blancs haven't been showing off Lake County's fruit," said Merrilees. She had a notion she wanted to pursue in making the sauvignon blanc, but Steele had been resistant.

Finally, with the 2010 harvest, he relented. "Jed gave me free rein on this one," she says. "He's old school. He didn't think yeasts made that much difference in a wine."

Her proposal, on the other hand, was to use three strains of yeast to ferment the wine. Steele had been using a popular French yeast and was content with the grapefruit and mineral tones it was coaxing from his grapes.

Merrilees, however, added two other yeasts. One is a South African strain she felt would enhance the grassy or herbaceous notes of the wine without sacrificing its citric attributes. The third yeast commonly is used to ferment chardonnay.

Steele, showing that he isn't locked into his "old school" ways, actually was the one to suggest it be used, his thinking being that it might help fatten up and round out the wine's body.

The collaborative experiment worked better than even they expected. At the Lake County Wine Awards Competition this summer, Jed Steele's Shooting Star 2010 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc was voted the best white wine on the strength of its refreshingly zesty fruit and remarkable complexity, balance and length.

While Lake County is celebrated primarily for its lean and vivid sauvignon blancs, the Shooting Star set a new standard in sassiness for the others to emulate. It was vivacious and focused, its power springing from uncompromised fruit enhanced with a current of minerality and a dash of spice.

Most of the grapes that went into the wine were from Dorn Vineyard on the Kelseyville Bench, a rise at nearly 1,500 feet elevation, where the soils are a rich red mix of volcanic residue, gravel, clay and loam. It's three miles south of Kelseyville.

While Merriless attributes the wine's distinctiveness largely to the county's snappy sauvignon blanc and the three yeasts that brought uncommon complexity to that forthright fruit, she also notes that the wine was fermented solely in stainless-steel tanks, with no aging in oak. The wine didn't go through malolactic fermentation, thus preserving the crisp acidity for which the varietal is known when it comes from Lake County.

Seven percent of the fruit in the wine was a variation of sauvignon blanc called sauvignon musqué, a mutation prized for its floral attributes. Merrilees also added 2 percent riesling for a touch of sweetness, so little that the wine still tastes dry, just exceptionally fruity.

Jed Steele's Shooting Star

2010 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc

By the numbers: 13.7 percent alcohol, 1,971 cases, $12

Context: Joy Merrilees, assistant winemaker at Steele Wines, calls the wine a "patio pounder," meaning it is so delicious and interesting on its own that it can be savored as an aperitif by itself. At the table, she likes it with various kinds of seafood, as well as any number of pear-and-walnut salads, a staple of restaurant menus in Lake County, where pears and walnuts are two other principal crops.

Availability: In the Sacramento area, the wine is stocked by Corti Brothers. At Lake Tahoe, it is carried by New Moon Natural Foods of Tahoe City. It also can be ordered online at the winery's website, www.steelewines.com.

Information: The tasting room at Steele Wines, 4350 Thomas Drive, Kelseyville, is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

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Longtime wine critic and competition judge Mike Dunne continues his relationship with The Bee as a contributing columnist to the Food & Wine section. His wine selections are based solely on tastings, judging at competitions, and visits to wine regions. Check out his blog at www.ayearinwine.com, and reach him at mikedunne@winegigs.com.

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