Gallo Marches On

In gazing at the Gallo galaxy, the immensity of their achievement is staggering. It’s the biggest wine complex in the world, and it’s celebrating its 75th year. It’s a cause for a toast not only for the four generations of Gallos presently affiliated with the winery, but for California winemakers and California wine lovers as well, because Gallo helped make California wines great. Their huge financial resources have made it so, accompanied by their vast vineyard real estate holdings, their state-of-the-art laboratories, their technology, even their glass plant (the largest in the country, perhaps the world). They taught and hired most of the sales and marketing people in the wine industry, as well as offering wine positions to many of the major winemakers still working in Napa and Sonoma. When Gallo’s Sonoma identity was emerging in the 1980s, they were generous in their advertising — their national “post box” ad of the early 1990s featuring many of their competitors’ names is still a landmark in wine advertising. It gave California wineries national recognition that none of them — not even collectively — could have afforded. Gallo lifted wine standards everywhere in the industry. The name of Gallo, like that of Robert Mondavi, is a beacon, which lighted California’s wine future, and showed the world what its awesome wine production would be like.

In 1933, after the repeal of Prohibition, Ernest and Julio Gallo created their family owned winery, and went on ultimately to become California’s first wine family. They were a team with an enormous work ethic, whose subsequent success was so great it was sure to prompt envy. One is made famous when fact and fiction conflate, when the apocryphal appears. There are more tales — some mythic, some accurate — about the legendary Ernest Gallo than anyone else in California wine world. The greater the fame, the greater the narrative. What’s fact, however, is that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Gallos decided that “generic jug” or commodity wines upon which many of us in the wine world were weaned (Gallo Hearty Burgundy, for example), were not for them, and that “varietal wines” were. The new prize would be a Gallo winery in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma. It was Julio Gallo’s vision, which sadly he could not entirely see because of his death in an automotive accident in 1993. His vision has been a reality for many years, sustained by Gina and Matt Gallo, grandchildren of Julio.

There are 15 Gallo members spanning multiple generations running the Gallo galaxy, which has also expanded into an import business, involving nine countries. Their total portfolio has 60 brands featuring excellent properties, like Louis Martini, Bridlewood, Clarendon Hills (one of Australia’s best Syrah), Martin Codax, Rancho Zabaco, and MacMurray Ranch. One of the notable aspects of Gallo’s proprietorship is that of the wineries they own they allow them to run largely as they did. There is no corporate hubris — no our way or the highway. (The Hollywood mentality never figured into the Gallo lifestyle; humility and modesty did; the limelight didn’t. Ernest Gallo took his own phone calls at home and his name could be found in the phone book to the day he died.) Louis Martini wines are better today because of Gallo funding — in fact, Martini wines have never been better. And the same can be said of Bridlewood, Rancho Zabaco, and MacMurray. Hubris and greed — sins that have brought down recent wine empires — are the two notable aspects missing in the Gallo creed.

Gallo didn’t just celebrate their 75th. They did what they always do — they conducted research. This latest dealt with family and image. Despite its size, Gallo is still very much a family winery, and their Sonoma property is the epicenter of its vast circumference. In an age of corporate conglomerates, it is interesting to note that in Gallo’s recent survey, they discovered that Americans admire family owned businesses; that they are eager to purchase family-owned wares; and that they believe in family pride. The survey says something about our view of size, about the alienation — the very existentialism — many feel when confronted with corporate monoliths. The recent mortgage mess and Wall Street’s banking bubble have helped cement such feelings. The data and research gained by Gallo will not be lost on them: they have always carefully guarded their family name and image.

“Our aims are still the same as my grandfather’s (Ernest) and great-uncle-Julio’s,” says Stephanie Gallo, Senior Director of Marketing: “we retain our traditions, we still challenge ourselves, still compete and strive, as they both would have wanted.” Gina Gallo concurs: “We’re the same. We respect our soil, sustain our environment, further our reputation, make good wine, and teach people how to enjoy it.”

For Gina, there is a personal and emotional involvement in the 75th anniversary: “it’s personal because it’s exciting to have siblings and cousins working at the winery; emotional because we’ve grown and learned from our grandparents, grand uncle, and now our parents, who have stayed the course.” When asked to describe the “course,” Gina doesn’t hesitate: “we think globally and act locally ? we partner with our wine export division, as we partner with other wineries we own; and, because our essence is wine, we want it to show a spirit of place. As a family, we understand that the gift we give our future generations is the land, its sustainability — it’s all about the soil — things which my grandfather Julio cared about all his life, and which my brother Matt is continuing.”

Like Robert Mondavi, who was insistent about the virtues of wine and civilization, Gina sees drinking “good wine as civility,” as “celebrating a life well-lived ? Ernest and Julio had such lives ? with each passing year, we continue to toast what they did and what they left.”

(All color photos: CS Photography; © E & J Gallo Winery)