Jeff Morgan

Author and winemaker Jeff Morgan is perhaps the only commercial winemaker who has been a critic for the prestigious Wine Spectator magazine, where he worked as West Coast Editor from 1992 to 2000. He has also written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, Elle Magazine and—with his wife, Jodie—has penned 10 books on food and wine; the last being, The Covenant Kitchen, Food and Wine for the New Jewish Table (Schocken Books).

In 2003, Jeff founded Covenant Winery in California’s Napa Valley, where he and his late business partner, Leslie Rudd, created a new high-quality paradigm for kosher wine. Today Covenant is an urban winery in Berkeley, CA, producing some 8,000 cases of California wine per year.

Prior to his wine-related activities, Jeff was the court musician and co-bandleader for Prince Rainier of Monaco in the 1980s. Then, after 25 years of musical silence, Jeff picked up his saxophone again during the COVID pandemic. He has since performed with his jazz quartet at City Winery in New York City and Le Cercle Suedois in Paris. Visitors to Covenant Winery in Berkeley in spring and summer can hear him play on occasion at the winery’s concert series.