US wine pioneer Ernest Gallo dies at 97

Mar 7, 2007, 5:39 GMT

San Francisco - California vintner Ernest Gallo, who with his brother Julio built one of the world's largest wine empires and is credited with developing Americans' taste for wine, has died at 97.

Gallo passed away Tuesday at his home in Modesto, his company, E and J Gallo Winery said.

Ernest Gallo, the elder brother, was the business brains behind the operation while Julio Gallo oversaw the making of the wine.

Ernest Gallo was renowned for his innovations in advertising, marketing and branding. His advertising campaigns particularly are seen as developing the mass market for wine that now exists in the United States.

His innovations helped to build the country's largest winery. Today, his company has 4,600 employees and sells its products in more than 90 countries.

Ernest Gallo only gave up his chief-executive post to his son Joseph at the age of 90 but remained active in the three-generation company until his death.

'Ernest and Julio were builders: They built their company from scratch, they helped build an industry and they helped build demand for wine few could have ever imagined when they started out more than 70 years ago,' said Robert Koch, president of the Wine Institute advocacy group.

The brothers founded their winery in the 1930s on the family farm started by their Italian-immigrant parents without knowing a thing about producing wine commercially, but they borrowed winemaking pamphlets from the Modesto City Library and managed to make a profit in their first year of production.

Their operation quickly grew with larger sales and the purchase of more wineries as they developed products to appeal to the American public. They sold a variety of wines as well as brandies, ports, sherries, vermouth and wine coolers.

Their sales of such household-name brands as Thunderbird, Ripple and Boone's Farm gave them a reputation for decades of producing low-cost 'jug' wines, but in the 1990s, they made a push into the fine-wine market.

Their company was the largest wine producer in the world until 2003, when a merger made Constellation Brands a bigger company.

Julio Gallo preceded his brother in death in 1993, dying in a jeep accident.