Obituary: Julio Gallo

Julio Gallo, wine-maker: born San Joaquin Valley, California 1910; married (one son, one daughter); died Tracy, California 2 May 1993.

FOLLOWING the death of the octogenarian wine-maker Julio Gallo in a car crash in California, there have been at least three different figures given for his age. Such confusion is not surprising, given the omerta-like approach to information by the family owners of the largest wine-making operation in the world.

Nearly two decades ago, after Gallo Wines took the unusual step of appointing a 'Communications Director', he described his function as 'the Gallo spokesman, who is unavailable for comment'. The Gallo wine library in Modesto County, central California, is one of the most extensive in existence but when the wine writer Hugh Johnson sought permission to use it in connection with his Wine Atlas of the World, he was told that 'only family' had access to it.

Julio, who was the wine-maker, and his elder brother Ernest, the wine- marketer, have had a larger impact than any other individuals on the growth of American table wine. More than a quarter of all wine sold in the United States is produced by Gallo, and in recent years they have targeted Britain as their next important market, spending unprecedented sums on advertising to herald their arrival in the country in 1989. No figures are released about their production, but annual sales are reportedly approaching dollars 1bn. Attempts to learn of their sales in Britain met with the response: 'We don't really talk very much about what we do.'

Julio's personal fortune was estimated to be more than pounds 200m, making the family business one of the largest in the United States. Despite their downmarket image, the Gallo brothers are credited with spearheading the renaissance of wine in California, where they own nearly half of the entire acreage under vines.

The business started in 1933 after the failure of the family grape-shipping business during the Depression. Julio and Ernest Gallo's father, Joe, an immigrant from Piedmont, killed his wife with a shotgun and then turned it on himself just after the end of Prohibition.

The first big success for Gallo Wines was a concoction called 'Thunderbird' - a lemon-flavoured white port which was the choice for oblivion of America's tramps. In the Thirties, Gallo employees were rumoured to spread empty bottles of Thunderbird around skid rows and inner city slums as a method of ensuring brand loyalty. Another product they marketed was an imitation whisky sour, originally called 'Sporting Wine', which was an amalgam of brandy, port with strong lemon and oak flavouring. When it failed to sell they changed the name to 'Champion's Belt', but it too had a lacklustre market. Another attempt at an innovative blend - 'Rhingarten' - was made from their rose and a white muscat. A quick name-change to 'Pink Chablis' did the trick and it trounced the competition. The chief reason for the success of the business, though, was that the Gallo brothers brought quality control to the mass wine market. Ernest Gallo boasted that his wine was even better than Chateau Lafite by virtue of its being 'more sanitary'.

The product that took the business out of the wino market and into suburban homes was 'Hearty Burgundy' and 'Chablis Blanc' - neither of which bore any relation to the original French products. By the 1980s, Gallo Wineries was essentially an industrial complex, with a 200-acre stainless steel tank farm and 30 acres of warehouses containing millions of bottles of wine. Because of the family desire to maintain control of every process, Gallo Wineries actually produce their own bottles from five furnaces on the site.

The brothers made a habit of suing anybody who was thought to be infringing the Gallo name, even forcing a small Veneto vinery called Gallo Stelio to change the name on the 150 cases a year they exported to the United States. They even attempted to get the name changed of the official Tuscan Chianti producers, the Consorzio del Gallo Nero.

By the mid-Eighties, Julio Gallo, the more retiring of the brothers, decided to take the company more upmarket and invested heavily in estates in Sonoma County in northern California, the most famous wine region after that of the neighbouring Napa Valley. They began with a Sauvignon Blanc varietal wine and have since started production of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon in an attempt to raise the product range of their winery above that of the bottom shelf of the wine merchants.

Julio Gallo's final car crash was not his first: his family have been involved in a number of motor accidents in the twisting narrow roads of the central California range where they lived. Several years ago, his granddaughter had been driving him when the car went off the road, badly injuring his neck. In 1990, with his wife Aileen behind the wheel, they struck another car head on, killing the driver and injuring her husband and three-month-old son.

According to those who have met the two brothers in the wine business, Julio was the more human of the two. He devoted his waking life to the cultivation of his vineyards, where he could be seen in his linen trousers and Panama.

Each afternoon at four, he would be in the tasting room, where he went through the various blends. He demanded forthright comments about his work from the various laboratory assistants and was said to have sacked one employee whom he discovered playing pool one Saturday afternoon with an assistant from a rival wine-maker. His only reported public activity was his monthly attendance at the local Rotary Club.

The administration of the empire is located near Modesto in a neo-Classical temple surrounded by lawns adorned with peacocks and guinea fowl. It is protected by uniformed guards with Gallo patches on their arms. Ernest Gallo's dominance in the partnership was evident simply from the position of his office: it sat directly over that of Julio.

In 1980, Ernest and Julio took their younger brother, Joe Jnr, to court, when he attempted to market a cheese under the Joseph Gallo label. Although he was the favourite son of their father, he was frozen out of the firm and ended up becoming a cattle rancher instead before deciding to venture into the cheese business. They accused him of endangering their reputation by producing cheese in a rat-infested plant while Joe Jnr's lawyers countered that his brothers made cheap wine to sell to drunks. The court ruled in Ernest and Julio's favour and there was no further contact between them and Joe. According to Ellen Hawkes, author of Blood and Wine, an unauthorised history of the Gallo family, the three brothers met in a closed meeting in an attempt to prevent the case from proceeding. Julio Gallo allegedly sobbed to Joe Jnr: 'Do you remember our mother's final words? All she wanted for us was to get along.'

(Photograph omitted)