Word: gallos
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...Gallos' impact on American wine making has been enormous. They were the nation's first wine makers to hire research chemists. Years ago they abandoned wooden fermenting casks for stainless-steel tanks, and because wood casks can breed unwanted bacteria, most of the domestic industry has followed. The Gallos were the first to automate their wineries by, among other things, computerizing the blending process. They also pioneered in pop wines-the sweet and occasionally effervescent drinks that are washing over the country. Last year, producing six of the dozens of entries on the market, Gallo accounted...
Makers of costlier premium California wines praise the Gallos for bringing new wine drinkers to the fold with their inexpensive wines, even though many drinkers damn the pop wines as an insult to cultivated taste. "Ernest Gallo has done more for the industry than any individual alive," says Joe Heitz, whose small winery turns out some of the state's most sophisticated wines. Though Gallo wines have long been something of a joke among wine snobs, lately oenophiles have been pleasantly surprised. Gallo's Pink Chablis recently triumphed over ten costlier competitors in a blind tasting among...
...French & Co. of mustard fame have recently become vineyard owners. So have Lazard Frères, the Wall Street investment-banking firm; John Hancock, the insurer; and Southdown Inc., the Houston-based conglomerate. Takeover-ripe wineries have become rare, and the bids for them are enormous. The Gallo brothers have spurned an offer from Seagrams of reportedly $150 to $200 million...
California had its own cataclysm in the 1920s: Prohibition. Many of Haraszthy's precious vines were ripped up. By the time of repeal in 1933, only a handful of vintners were left, turning out spirits supposedly for sacramental or pharmaceutical purposes. Against this dismal backdrop, Ernest and Julio Gallo entered the business...
...made the rounds of local grape growers and soon had enough grapes to make all the wine that the tanks could hold-but no customers for it. A few days before Prohibition ended, the brothers received a form letter from a would-be wine distributor in Chicago. Ernest Gallo immediately hopped a plane for Chicago and sold the distributor 6,000 gallons at 50? each. Emboldened, he continued East and found enough customers to take his entire production. The Gallos' first-year profit was $34,000, all of which was plowed back into the company...