Gallo to Ferment Permanently in the Celestial Cellar
Ernest Gallo died Tuesday at the age of 97.
Gallo, with his empire built upon screwcap bottles of simple table wines, taught America to think about wine. A country that preferred Coca-Cola, “lawnmower beer” and whiskey was lured into discovering wines by the sugary buzz of Thunderbird and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.
When I was a child, most adults in the restaurant ordered wine by color–red, white or blush. (Or, for the more efite: burgandy, rose and chablis.) My Dad poured thousands of modestly-priced carafes of blended “guild” wines that were really pretty decent. Then, the people discovered varietals–cabernet, merlot, pinot, syrah, malbec….and everything changed.
As consumers became more discerning, the best grapes went to bottling straight varietals. The blended box wines, deprived of the better grapes, became catch-alls for the worst of the harvest and degraded to sub-swill quality. (And, there was that unfortunate detour into the pink lemonade for grownups known as “white zinfandel”.) We discontinued them and began stocking house poors of Cabernet and Chardonnay.
The magnitude of change finally hit me one day when I walked through the dining room and overheard a customer attempting to order “chablis” from a young server. She was totally stumped and asked for a description. When the customer specified a desire for white wine, the server said “Oh, you want chardonnay!” Then the customer was stumped.
Today, we enjoy tremendous variety and quality in our domestic wines thanks to the master salesmanship of the late Mr. Gallo. Think fondly of him the next time you stroll the liquor aisles of a well-stocked supermarket.
Finally, I can’t let it pass without mentioning: California’s other great mass-producer of table wines, Robert Mondavi, was from my grandfather’s hometown of Sassoferrato. There is a link to the Marche region of Italy, from which my family hails, in the blogroll.
Getting Railed the Right Way
Arizona Republic – Phoenix,AZ,USA
Monti’s La Casa Vieja has been selected as the first recipient of a $20000 line of credit available to Tempe businesses affected by light-rail construction. …
