Gallo: Godfathers Of Wine | The Gallo Family Today |
When Ernest and Joseph Gallo died in 2007, decades after their brother Julio, it put an end to a family saga that had stretched for the better part of a century. But the company the brothers founded is still going strong. On the show this week is Cyril Penn, Editor In Chief of Wine Business Monthly, a trade magazine for the wine industry. We’ll talk about the current state of the Gallo Family wine brand and how it fits in the wider California wine industry. Plus, we’ll bring in Barbara Bogaev, who wrote this series, for a quick chat about how she researched the story.
History of the Gallo Winery
The Gallo winery was established after the repeal of prohibition in 1933 by two brothers, Ernest and Julio. According to family legend, they read a pamphlet in their local library that gave them enough information to get started. In fact, they’d been unofficially in business for years with their father, Joseph.
Joseph Gallo was an immigrant from Piedmont in Italy who established an illegal winemaking and distribution network during prohibition. Joseph was unscrupulous, but he was also a wine pioneer. One of his bestsellers was something called “vine-glo”, a jellied wine juice that could be turned into wine proper when mixed with water. Joseph made his fortune, but on the eve of the repeal of prohibition, as Ellen Hawkes tells it in her sensationalist biography of the family, Blood & Wine: The Unauthorized Story of the Gallo Wine Empire (1993), he and his wife, Susie, were found dead at their farm in Fresno, California. The official verdict was that it was a murder/suicide – Joseph had shot his wife, and then turned the gun on himself. Others said it was a mob hit. Maybe so: Joseph’s brother Mike is described by another biographer as “the Al Capone of the West Coast”.
Undettered by family tragedy, the Gallo brothers got on with the serious business of business. Julio was in charge of production. Ernest took charge of everything else. As it turned out, according to Jerome Tuccille in Gallo Be Thy Name: The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the US Wine Market (2009), Ernest was a marketing genius. He wanted America to be “wine conscious”, and he set out to make Gallo wines “the Campbell Soup of the wine industry”. Julio just wanted to make good wines. Ernest got his way. By the late 1960s they were the largest wine producers in the US. Their reputation flourished. The quality of the wines was improving.
But family tumult followed. There was another Gallo brother, Joseph, who had been raised by Julio and Ernest after their parents’ death in 1933. Joseph worked with his brothers in the wine business until 1967, but what he really wanted to do was become a cheese-maker. In 1988, Ernest and Julio filed an injunction against Joseph to prevent him from using the name Gallo on his cheeses. In a counterclaim, Joseph attempted to sue his older brothers for having cheated him out of his rightful inheritance of a third of the business. It was a war between wine and cheese.
Julio died in a car accident in 1993. Ernest died in 2007. Gallo wines is now run by two of Julio’s grandchildren, Matt and Gina. Joseph Gallo’s cheeses are marketed as Joseph Farms Cheese – his son now runs the business.
Blood and Wine (Review)
Using a mountain of court documents, old newspapers and records and independent research, Ellen Hawkes, a freelance writer, has written “Blood and Wine: The Unauthorized Story of the Gallo Wine Empire” (Simon & Schuster, $25), an engrossing account of the Gallo family and their wine business.
Fast-paced, gossipy rundown on the House of Gallo, whose octogenarian patriarchs helped make wine a mass-market commodity in the US while concealing a past replete with personal and business scandal. Although Ernest and Julio remain the most familiar Gallos, they have a younger brother, Joseph, Jr., who has no stake in the family firm. When the two elders, who built the immensely profitable E & J Gallo Winery, sued Joseph during the mid-1980’s to prevent him from putting his own name on the cheese he made for sale, they opened a Pandora’s box.
Drawing on the vast troves of documentary material released by the protracted litigation, and on his access to many Gallo principals, relatives, and ex-employees, Hawkes (Feminism on Trial, 1986) offers a revelatory, generation- spanning chronicle. In addition to piercing the corporate veil, the author discloses that Joseph, Sr., an Italian immigrant who became a successful grape grower in northern California, murdered his wife and then killed himself in 1933.
His estate gave Ernest and Julio the means to get into the wine business in a big way—with an unacknowledged assist from a bootlegging uncle. Hawkes leaves little doubt that the ruthlessly autocratic Ernest euchred a trusting Joseph, Jr., out of a potentially sizable legacy. Moreover, she points out, for all its oenological pretensions, Gallo’s most profitable products are so-called street wines (Thunderbird, Night Train Express, Gypsy Rose).
Covered as well are: the strong-arm tactics used to gain distribution for Gallo wares; frequent run-ins with federal authorities; the peace of mind attained by Joseph, Jr., despite primal betrayals; and a host of familial fancies long accepted as facts. While Hawkes gives Joseph, Jr., the benefit of almost every doubt, she provides a slick reckoning on the Gallos, a would-be dynasty that, by her account, may be nearing the end of the line. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Follow the interesting stories from Business Wars Below…
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | The Gangster and The Grape Grower | 1
It’s the early 1900’s and two young brothers emigrate from Italy to the US to make their fortunes. In California, they con, grift and bamboozle their fellow immigrants out of thousands of dollars, enough to start a wine business. But when Prohibition shuts that down, they dive into the dangerous game of bootlegging, with disastrous results.
The older brother has two young sons, Ernest and Julio Gallo. He doesn’t know it yet, but his sons will eventually transform his sketchy legacy into the largest wine company in the world, E & J Gallo Winery.
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | Violence in the Vineyard | 2
It’s the roaring twenties and Joe Gallo Sr.’s two teenage sons, Ernest and Julio, help run the family’s extensive vineyards and bootlegging operations. Young Ernest plays a tricky game, dealing with Al Capone in Chicago and dodging G-men. But the stock market crash of ’29 pitches the family into a financial free fall, and drives their volatile father to become increasingly violent. Until, one fateful day, their parent’s lives come to a sudden, horrific and mysterious end.
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | The Miracle Year | 3
It’s the 1930s and with Prohibition finally over, Americans are eager to drown themselves in booze. Ernest Gallo persuades his reluctant brother, Julio, to partner with him on starting a winery. Ernest employs every trick in the book to bolster sales, including conning customers, flouting laws and dodging government inspectors. He then gives his younger brother Joe, Jr. a menial job in the family business, but mistreats him badly. And when Joe, Jr. comes of age, Ernest and Julio terminate their guardianship of him in a secretive manner that will haunt the family, and one day cast a terrible shadow over their empire.
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | Thunderbird | 4
It’s the 1940s and as American soldiers battle the Axis powers overseas, Ernest and Julio Gallo fulfill lucrative government contracts for jet fuel ingredients made out of ethyl alcohol, known as “torpedo juice.” They also make a risky wager on the volatile grape market. When peace comes, the Gallo brothers pour their wartime windfall into developing the most aggressive and controversial sales techniques in the industry.
Towards the end of the 1950s Ernest Gallo creates a blockbuster new product aimed at black, urban consumers. Thunderbird — beloved by winos everywhere — rockets Gallo to the top, but drives a wedge between the high-minded winemaker Julio Gallo and his bottom-line obsessed brother, Ernest.
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | The Grapes of Wrath | 5
Heading into the turbulent 1960s, Ernest Gallo attempts to conquer the Midwestern wine market by taking on a dangerous associate of Al Capone in Chicago. As the company grows, the two Gallos join forces in consolidating their control over the family empire and edging their younger brother, Joe, Jr, out of the family business. But just as Gallo reaches the pinnacle of the industry, it gets caught in the middle of a major labor rights battle. Cesar Chavez and his United Farmworkers are fighting with the Teamsters union over who will represent grape pickers. Chavez’s Gallo Boycott is poised to become the company’s biggest public relations challenge yet.
Gallo: Godfathers of Wine | Wine is Thicker Than Blood | 6
It’s the 1980’s and Gallo rockets to the top of the new lucrative wine cooler market with a brilliant ad campaign for its Bartles and Jaymes brand. But long held resentments, buried secrets and lurking distrust bubble up to the surface when the “unknown Gallo brother,” Joe, Jr., launches a cheese business under the label of Joseph Gallo. Now Ernest, Julio and Joe Jr. fight a final bitter trademark battle in court over the family fortune and legacy.
