Word: wining
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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National Distillers Products Corp. bought Italian Swiss in 1942 as a hedge against wartime restrictions on whisky. But, after the war, the U.S. wine market turned sour, and has stayed that way ever since. Accordingly, National was glad to sell...
...company was selling so much bulk wine in kegs that Louis Petri quit St. Louis University's medical school to start rolling barrels in his family's San Francisco warehouse. He soon convinced his father that keg distribution was outmoded, launched a program to bottle the company's wine under the Petri label and distribute it nationally. (Today, less than 10% of Petri's output is in bulk.) He also expanded Petri's more profitable sweet wine business while holding on to Petri's dry wine market. By 1945, having learned the business from...
...soon showed a shrewd eye for a smart deal. In 1949, he bought up the big Mission Bell winery in the San Joaquin Valley for $3,250,000, thereby doubled Petri's storage capacity to 20 million gals. He also figured that it was more profitable to distribute wine than to grow and crush grapes. So in 1951 he helped organize 300 small-and medium-size San Joaquin growers into the Allied Grape Growers, Inc., a cooperative to which he sold all his wineries in the valley. In return, Petri got exclusive marketing rights to Allied's output...
Wineman's Choice. Last week, after a frost in the San Joaquin Valley nipped vines and sent the price of sweet wine in bulk up to 37½? a gal. (from a low of 32½?), many a vintner thought Petri had made a smart buy. To swing the deal for Italian Swiss Colony, he had borrowed from the Bank of America. That the bank was willing to plunge into the precarious winemaking business was a pat on the back for Petri...
...Previous Big Five U.S. winemakers, in order of capacity: Roma (30,000,000 gals.); California Wine Association, a growers' cooperative (29,650,000 gals.); Italian Swiss Colony (26,000,000 gal.); Wine Growers' Guild, a cooperative (22,000,000 gals.); Petri (20,000,000 gals...