Death of a Giant: Ernest Gallo
By Scott W Clemens

March 6th, 2007
Ernest Gallo died today. There’s no point in rehashing the well-known biography here. Everyone knows that the Gallo brothers together forged one of the most successful family businesses in America, and gave America a sea of affordable wine. Later in life they built their premium Gallo Sonoma business in Dry Creek Valley, proving that they could make wine to compete with the best in the business. The latter operation has been ably run by their grandchildren.

When I started working for Seagram’s wine companies in the 1970s, it seemed that most of the people I worked with had spent some time with Gallo, chief among them Terry Clancy, who later became president of Callaway winery and the Wine Alliance. Unlike most wineries which met the media with open arms, Gallo was always known as a secretive organization; Ernest was a very shrewd operator. It was hard to get in the front door, and even then you had to be escorted on a tight leash. I was invited to lunch with Ernest in the late 1980’s, after I’d written some favorable reviews. I found him genial enough, but I’d come to pick his brain and he ended up picking mine. Each time I asked him a pertinent question, he had trouble with his hearing aid; he seemed doddering (he was in his late 70s at the time). Then he would ask me a pertinent question, and like a fool I would answer. When we said our goodbyes I realized I’d been hoodwinked. I came away with precious little, and he’d gotten every little bit of information he could out of me. He was very sharp.

The other three things I remember from that visit was the million gallon tank, the glass factory where you could see molten glass being made into wine bottles, and the warehouse — Gallo’s PR spokesman, Dan Soloman, drove me through the warehouse in a Volvo. The cases were stacked 20 feet high, and railroad tracks ran right through the center of the building. It took five minutes to pass from one end to the other. The immensity of the operation is really breathtaking.

In the late 1990’s (when he was in his late 80’s) I was again invited to lunch with Ernest as he visited some retail accounts on the San Francisco Peninsula. We ate at Kuleto’s in Burlingame. True to form, he was genial, deaf, and very sharp.

Mondavi, Clemens and Gallo at BV's 100th Anniversary

In some ways he was the opposite of his contemporary, Robert Mondavi. Both were the sons of Italian immigrants. Bob is gregarious, while Ernest was the introvert. I only saw them once together, at the centennial celebration of Beaulieu Vineyards. As I wrote in another tribute on the 40th anniversary of the Robert Mondavi Winery:

At the 100th anniversary of Beaulieu Vineyard we tasted wines from the 1940s to the 1990s. At the conclusion of the tasting the Panel Chairman asked if anyone had anything to say about the older wines. Ernest Gallo, who then must have been close to 90, got up and declared that he didn't see what all the fuss was about; the old wines were tired and didn't taste good, and he preferred a good glass of Hearty Burgundy. Mondavi, on the other hand, is a wine connoisseur, and came to the defense of the old wines (which were, by and large, magnificent), speaking eloquently on the charms of aged wines, and of the BV wines in particular.

He may not have been a connoisseur of older wines, but Ernest Gallo was an empire builder, and there aren’t many of those in the world. He’s left his family an amazing legacy, both materially and more importantly in the kind of character it takes to turn vision into reality.

Rest in peace.