Word: grapes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wine business is still dominated by a single state: California. Its 267 wineries produce 85% of the wine made in the U.S., and Californians individually drink about twice as much wine as other Americans. Grapes represent the Golden State's largest cash crop; in the past four years of heavy demand and rising labor costs, prices for premium Cabernet Sauvignon grapes have jumped from $305 a ton to about $ 1,000. They will rise still higher as a result of a tight supply. Because of a spring frost and August heat-wave damage, the 1972 California grape harvest, which...
...used four mules and worked the vineyards seven days a week from daylight to dusk." With the first stirrings of repeal, they dug up $5,900.23 in capital and set out to produce their own wine. They rented a railroad shed for $60 a month, bought a $2,000 grape crusher and redwood tanks on 90-to 180-day terms...
There was one nettlesome problem: though they had plenty of experience growing grapes, they did not know how to make wine. In the Modesto public library, Ernest found a pair of two-page pamphlets, one on fermentation and the other on the care of wine. Thus enlightened, he 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...
Another element of the Gallos' success is technology. Their staff of 25 graduate oenologists is the nation's largest. Automation has cut production costs to the stalk: Gallo Hearty Burgundy, for instance, is made from more expensive grapes than a number of comparable competing Burgundies, but mass production helps keep the price about the same. The Gallos have the industry's first winery-owned bottlemaking plant, producing up to 1,500,000 bottles a day-all tinted in shades of green created by Gallo researchers to screen harmful ultraviolet rays. Though the Gallos' oenologists have developed...
...Grape Rush. The future of California wine is clouded by much more than international disputes. The far greater problem: success breeds grapes. Twice as many new wine-grape vines are being planted in California this year as last. Because of overplanting, the wine supply may catch up with demand within the next three or four years. "By 1974 the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon alone will triple," predicts Jack Welch, vice president of Christian Brothers. "Just where is all that Cabernet going to find a home...