Ernest Gallo: 1909 - 2007 (Modesto Bee via AP)

Ernest Gallo: 1909 - 2007
With brother, he created World's Largest Winery

By W. Blake Gray, Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writers

Winemaker Ernest Gallo, who learned his craft in the basement of the Modesto public library and went on to develop with his brother Julio one of the largest wine empires in the world, has died. Gallo, 97, died unexpectedly Tuesday in his Modesto home.

An aggressive businessman who worked long hours and then went home and worked some more, Gallo insisted on always having his home number listed in the Modesto phone book so the world would know where to find him. His collection of wineries and labels, all privately owned, employs 4,600 workers and sells wine in 90 countries.

For decades, the name Gallo was synonymous with inexpensive California wine. Gallo battled that image with advertising, with humor, with lawsuits and, to a large extent, by buying up wineries with more exclusive labels than his own.

"Ernest was a visionary,'' said his friend and fellow winemaker, Robert Mondavi of Napa Valley. "He was committed to making America a wine-drinking country.''

Gallo lived and breathed wine. He aired wine commercials on TV, he sat on wine promotion boards, he chaired the Wine Institute, he mentored generations of winemakers, he erected wine billboards, he traveled the country checking on wine displays in supermarkets, and he enjoyed drinking his own stuff, particularly a product that morphed over the years from "red table wine" to "Cabernet Sauvignon.''

When he was a boy, his Aunt Tillie in San Francisco read his fortune in tarot cards and told him he would become successful in business, according to "Ernest & Julio: Our Story," his joint autobiography with his brother. His future profession was not clear to Tillie, but she foresaw that it would involve a fluid -- either oil or wine.

Ernest and Julio founded E. & J. Gallo Winery in 1933 using a $5,000 loan from Ernest's mother-in-law and Julio's entire savings of $900.23.

The brothers learned about winemaking by reading old, pre-Prohibition pamphlets found in the basement of the Modesto Public Library.

With Ernest running the business side and Julio overseeing production, the company eventually dominated the U.S. wine industry. Until 2003, when Constellation Brands expanded through a merger, Gallo was the largest wine producer in the world.

Ernest Gallo -- who, it is said, once told his brother, "You make the wine and I'll sell it'' -- was known as a ruthless businessman. He reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in 1976 for using strong-arm business tactics such as forbidding his wholesalers to carry non-Gallo brands. He played hardball with the United Farm Workers union, earning himself and his company widespread enmity that has never dissipated. Gallo was the subject of a long UFW boycott in the 1970s and another in 2005.

In the 1980s, Ernest and Julio sued their estranged younger brother, Joseph Gallo Jr., over the use of the Gallo name on Joseph's cheese business. Joseph lost. (Joseph Gallo Jr. died Feb. 17 in Livingston, Merced County. He was 87.)

Ernest Gallo could be demanding employer, his subordinates recalled. Advertising man Monty McKinney, who had worked on the Gallo account, once recalled: "If not a violent screamer, (Gallo) was at least a pretty audible shouter. On an emotional thermometer with a top reading of 100, Ernest regularly registered between 90 and 120."

When he did go on vacation, Ernest Gallo enjoyed deep-sea fishing. But mainly he worked. His endless marketing efforts succeeded in creating new markets for wine in a country that had largely lost touch with wine during Prohibition. For decades he traveled around the country, from grocery store to grocery store, persuading managers to move wine from behind the counter to prominent floor displays. He also aggressively underpriced his competition.

"I know Texans aren't drinking table wine. If they won't buy it, I'll give it away to them," he said in his autobiography, describing how he created demand for wine in Texas with deep discounts on the red blend Paisano.

At age 90, when Gallo had left the CEO post and was chairman, he told Wine Spectator that he still worked until 6:30 p.m. every day and then went home and worked three hours more.
Ernest Gallo, the eldest of three boys, was born in Jackson (Amador County) in 1909. His family moved from place to place as his father's various farming ventures failed.

"My first-grade teacher told me I was the dumbest student she ever had," he told Wine Spectator magazine. "She did me a favor. If she told me I was very smart, I wouldn't have tried to improve."

His father, Joe (born Giuseppe in Italy), tried growing wine grapes in Antioch before moving to California's Central Valley, where he grew grapes for the home winemaking market that thrived during Prohibition.

When he was 17, Ernest persuaded his father to send him to Chicago to sell a railcar full of family grapes. The young man haggled better than many men decades his senior and netted $17,000, a huge amount of money in those days.

Tragedy overwhelmed the family in 1933 when Joe Gallo shot and killed both himself and his wife, Susie. At the time, their eldest son was already trying to start a winery but was stymied by Prohibition-era laws that required him to own a vineyard. When Joe died, Ernest Gallo claimed he would inherit ownership of his vineyard and succeeded in gaining approval, though this would lead years later to an unsuccessful claim by Joseph Jr. that Ernest and Julio had taken part of his inheritance, according to an unauthorized family history written by Ellen Hawkes. That family rift never healed.

By then, Gallo was a well-known name. Ernest Gallo had an uncanny talent for tapping into consumer tastes with sweet products such as Boone's Farm (which was so popular in the 1970s that it caused a worldwide shortage in the apple concentrate it was made from), Ripple and Thunderbird.

Gallo moved upscale in 1974, introducing high quality, cork-finished varietal wines, but the venture failed. He also developed E. & J. Brandy and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

In later years, Gallo developed its Gallo of Sonoma line and began buying upscale competitors, including the Mirassou and Louis M. Martini labels, and introducing foreign brands Ecco Domani and Red Bicyclette.

He also developed Turning Leaf wines, with a label allegedly designed to resemble that of the better-known Kendall Jackson winery. After a nasty legal battle, a jury decided the Turning Leaf label did not infringe on its competitor.

Gallo often dined with his friend Mondavi, and the two men would good naturedly goad one another into drinking the other's wine.

"Mine's just as good as yours,'' friends recalled Gallo saying.

Gallo's wife of 62 years, Amelia, died in 1993, the same year Julio was killed in a jeep accident on the family ranch. His son David died in 1997 of a seizure. A second son, Joseph Ernest Gallo, is CEO and co-president of the winery.

Ernest Gallo also is survived by four grandchildren.

A private service will be held Saturday in Modesto.

E-mail the writers:
W. Blake Gra
wgray@sfchronicle.com

Steve Rubenstein
srubenstein@sfchronicle.com