Customer Reviews

Gallo Be Thy Name: The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the U.S. Wine Market

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Gallo and Exxon have much in common. Gasoline is still a little cheaper, but their production volumes have a certain affinity for their markets. They both age. A little. Both face a glut. As for aroma and taste, well, in a blind taste test...no I will not spoil it.

This is a story of the Gallo family. Jerome Tuccille has some twenty-five books credited to him. He boasts several lines of business in books. If you like books that explore the broken headed families of those grasping for riches, you might enjoy this book. Do not come here for history, business or wine. There are some informative passages on California wine companies, government and advertising.

Book I is the nightmare story of the immigrant founding family, full of death and then cops and mobsters. Less than interesting as here written, but it explains how the second generation was deformed. Book II begins with an economics lesson. Before 1913, the government of the United States took in one third of its revenues from alcohol tax. We were very close to the Russians of the same period. The most interesting idea in this book is that Prohibition was repealed because the government revenues from the new Income Tax were shriveled by the Great Depression. Sounds familiar now, does it not?

By 1935. Gallo produced 350,000 gallons. Thy had storage for 350,000 gallons. Mr. Tuccille writes that Gallo sold 941,000 gallons. I wish he told us how.

Gallo did not age wine. They produced a syrup of what Mr. Tuccille calls Dago Red. It was illegal, but he does not give any details. Rather than cultivating, aging and caring, Gallo preferred additives like caramel, sugar, and stronger spirits. Gallo was a customer of the local coal-tar producer, but claimed never to have bought any. Good thing, because it causes cancer even as a topical application, let alone ingested.

World War II brought new opportunities for Gallo. This great Patriot went into the business of falsifying his costs to the War Department, for his sale of alcohol to produce synthetic rubber, among other of his ventures.

By the war's end, we are told Gallo controlled 3/4ths of the grapes grown in California. We are not told how. The 1946 harvest crushed 1.6 million tons of grapes, a 40% increase over the previous record. Mr. Tuccille does not say how. He does not bother to say what the effects were. Somehow, Gallo was able to "dictate prices" somehow, although the market price went from $1.75 to $0.38, he tells us. This is control? To further contradict himself, Mr. Tuccille says the grape growers banded together in cooperatives, the largest of which comprised 275 growers storing nineteen million gallons by 1950. Gallo stored a million and a half by then. Nothing adds.

Mr. Tucille is not so good with geography either. He has Ernest on vacation in Agliano d'Asti, driving north to Lourdes, France -- you know, where Switzerland used to be. Obviously of Italian heritage, he translates "bagna", as he says, "literally", as "sauce", not bath. Just a warning in case he invites you over.

A justifiable portion of the book is given over to the cheap sugary pseudo wines that fueled the empire. But our author goes after Red Foxx as touting on late night TV, being ripped on Ripple. How much effort was it to write that Mr. Fox was on a hit prime time sit-com where he really said he made Champipple from ginger ale and Ripple.

The rest of the book is given over to the insane, destructive family antics and warfare. This book is too careless to have proper notes and references. Instead we are given imprecise and chatty commentary for each chapter at the end.

"Gallo Be Thy Name" tells the story of the family which came to be a major player in the world wine market. The book mostly presents the family stories of three generations of Gallos. It chronicles the development of the company from a small California provider to a large company whose products spread across the globe.

During Prohibition, generally a difficult time for wineries, the Gallos prospered and expanded, largely by selling grapes, for cash, to the Capone operation in Chicago. Patriarch Mike Gallo liked to get his payments directly from Capone. With the repeal of Prohibition the Gallos went legit and continued to expand for decades. After the death of the founder, the growth of the winery continued under the leadership of his sons, Ernest and Julio, who would become the names associated with the business in the eyes of the nation. They would each take on duties of the business, Ernest for marketing and Julio for production. Throughout the years the business would prosper in the low cost, mass wine market, while aspiring to be recognized as contenders in the higher quality markets.

Author Jerome Tuccille does a good job of telling a story of business success marred by personal tragedy, a family torn by lawsuits but resilient enough to achieve dizzying heights of success. Founder Mike, who was viewed as a tyrant by his sons, and his wife Susie were found dead in 1933, either by murder or murder-suicide. Their grandson would later commit suicide. Their son, Mike, Jr., would later be sued by his brothers, Ernest and Julio, over an alleged trademark infringement and would counter sue over his parents' estate. Ernest and Julio would prevail in litigation, at the cost of permanent estrangement from Mike. Despite his feelings of betrayal, Mike would achieve success as a cheese producer.

This book does a good job of telling the story which, in some ways, sounds like "The Godfather" without being judgmental or turning it into a soap opera. He tells how the business was involved with the mob during prohibition and was often brushing with the law. As success followed, Ernest and Julio would buy political protection by their lavish campaign contributions. Although the family friction and squabbles would be unfortunate, the Gallos are not portrayed as a group of dysfunctional individuals, as is the case with some other prominent families. They come across as hardnosed business people who did what was necessary to succeed. The writing style is journalistic which, as good journalism will, holds your interest without arousing your emotions. I recommend this to anyone with an interest in family histories, the history of the wine industry or the history of California.

Gallo Be Thy Name is an unvarnished view of an American wine dynasty which rose from poverty in the early 1900's to become of the most successful wine companies in the world. Crime, cunning, and triumph, along with rumors of murder, is the background of this intriguing story. The Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery has a carefully crafted and polished image, which bespeaks a tale of passion, greed and ambition. An enjoyable read which gives a different perspective to an example of a rags to riches American family's success.

I'm not a wine person, but I grew up knowing about the Gallos from their television commercials. I was excited to read this book to find out what was behind the name on the commercials that I still remember.

I quickly became dismayed by the organization and poor writing of this book. The author starts in 1899 with the birth of Al Capone, and then simply relates everything in chronological order. Since I'm not a wine person, I'm not aware of the later significance of many of the events, and the author does nothing to draw out the important parts from the trivialities. Indeed, he highlights some of the unimportant parts with purply prose that reads like a high school freshman with a thesaurus.

The significance of the Gallo Brothers is their masterful marketing, but it's all just part of the timeline. I could have done less with the soap opera of their lives (I get that Earnest was an old-world brute of a man, so don't belabor the point on every page), and a lot more about their marketing campaigns, complete with pictures of the ads, the labels of the wines, and so on. Very little attention is given to the overall wine market and what other wineries were doing.

I also expected more about wine-making, and aside from the odd paragraph or two, it seems that all you do is squeeze some grapes and put the juice in bottles. Apparently the Gallo Winery did quite a bit of experimenting, but the book doesn't go into detail on the process. It's more interested in the petty dramas of their lives.

I kept hoping the book would pick up after the Gallos took over the national market, but it didn't. I was hoping to pass the book on to some friends after I was done, but I would be embarrassed to share this with anyone.

The Gallo family is interesting and one the original American wine families to succeed in business. I knew very little about the Gallo family and it's history so for me it was a bit of an eye opener. Scandalous situations at times, the book hints that the Italian family had shady connections during prohibition and in it's aftermath.The author, Jerome Tuccille states he has written or coauthored 25 books and is well versed in the American biography.The first part of the book is dedicated to covering the groundbreaking work of the parents of Ernest and Julio entrenching the Gallo name in the annals of wine in America. They payed a heavy price and both were found dead from an apparent murder suicide because of financial hardships. It is suggested that such may not have been the case and that foul play may have caused their deaths. Who knows, it is a tragic beginning nonetheless.The Gallo brothers, Ernest and Julio,begin their young adulthood in search of buying land and making money in the wine industry after prohibition. Thus, the Gallo brothers set about in their conquest of making and saving money in the new flourishing California wine business. The role of a younger brother, Joe, is almost nonexistent. Again there is more controversy about whether he got his fair due when his parents died. The most interesting parts of the book have to do with how they had a knack for marketing without much wine making knowledge and had so much success. They always talked about bringing quality wine to the American consumer but in reality, they produced the cheap stuff that could be found in any inner city liquor store in the seventies. Such rot gut, soda pop wines like Ripple, Bartles and James, Thunderbird and many others, including their jug wine, was how the Gallo name came to dominate the wine industry early on. The amazing part of this story is how they had the vision to anticipate the growth of the wine industry to the billion dollar California industry it is today.The Gallo brothers fought their share of battle to achieve their dream and one of the most well known was the conflict with Chavez's UFW. The well documented strike conducted by the farm workers makes for interesting history. If you are into wine or business you will probably find this book an interesting read. It is easy to read and the American success story is fascinating and well worth the short time it will take to read this book. This is good summer reading while you are enjoying a glass of wine on your patio or deck.

I had hoped for this book to be more business based. To actually discuss how the Gallo family did rise to dominate the US wine market. Apparently, they got there through greed, domineering tactics, politics, and force. So the focus of the majority of this book is the internal family drama, the manipulative ways of Ernest and Julio. The theme of this book should really be the Gallo Family itself.

Kudos to the author, Jerome Tuccille, for the research. The Gallo's are clearly private and controlled a lot of the press revolving them, it's hard to find accurate available information or family members/staff willing to talk. It's a hard book to want to take on.

Gallo be Thy Name is a family biography about one of America's most powerful and influential business families. Most Americans are familiar with the Gallo brand and its name enjoys widespread recognition- even among those who are not consumers of wine products. The company produces many different wines under several different labels and the Gallo family history is every bit as colorful as its lineup of wines. This book details the Gallo family saga, complete with stories involving abusive relationships, business troubles, involvement with the mob, suicide, and other tragedies and mishaps. The book details the rise of Ernest and Julio Gallo and one of the world's largest wine operations, along with the many episodes of drama that typically accompanies a family with so much wealth and influence.

Gallo be Thy Name opens the reader's eyes to several facts about the Gallo family- many of which the average person is likely unaware. I knew the Gallo wine operation was huge and that it enjoyed great business success, but I did not know about all of the Gallo family mishaps and some of them still remain a mystery. Probably the greatest surprise is that Ernest and Julio's parents were both found dead and that most people at the time assumed the father shot his wife and then himself. However, this could have also been a murder by the mob or someone else because certain circumstances just don't make sense. One is the fact that both of the family dogs were shot, too. If this was a murder- suicide, then why would the Gallo patriarch have shot his dogs? This and other tragedies are discussed at some length throughout the pages of Gallo be Thy Name, with the author making sure to point out the many family struggles, disagreements, setbacks, tragedies, and triumphs that have made the Gallo name what it is today.

Besides the family strife, there is much more to learn about the Gallo family in the pages of Gallo be Thy Name. One interesting fact I did not know was that Julio Gallo strongly disliked the wine that he and his brother were producing for most of the company's existence. The problem was that American tastes in wine had not yet matured- they favored sweet, fruity wines that tasted more like kool- aid than a quality adult beverage. Julio only went along with the production of these low- quality products at the insistence of his brother Ernest. His brother wanted Gallo to reach the top ranking in terms of size and influence and if this meant producing and selling lower quality wine, well, that was the way it was going to be. Only in the future- starting in roughly the 1980's- did the American public develop a better taste for quality wine. At long last, Julio was able to create the quality wine he had always dreamed of making.

Gallo be Thy Name is a told like a story, and in many instances it almost seems like a work of fiction. The characters are colorful, the stakes are huge, and the men are ruthless. Add to that the early and untimely deaths of different members of the Gallo family and you have a biography that reads like a modern tragedy with a semi- happy ending. The Gallo Company certainly achieved the business success it had always dreamed about, but the family was torn apart through lawsuits and witnessed many of its members die at young ages. The bittersweet tale is told with directness and frankness by the author and even though he seems sympathetic toward young Joe Gallo and his treatment by his brothers, the author avoids taking sides and simply presents the story of the family. He doesn't try to solve any of he family mysteries and he doesn't make judgment calls. He leaves the final analysis to the reader, making for a very good read about this famous winemaking family.

Jerome Tuccille begins "Gallo Be Thy Name" with the shooting deaths of Joseph Gallo, Sr. and his wife Susie in 1933, just as Prohibition was ending. Joseph, Sr. was a violent man, and he met a violent end. The implication seems to be that the Earnest & Julio Gallo Winery, raised to national prominence by Joseph, Sr.'s two eldest sons, was built on blood and other unpleasant things. After presenting us with the mysterious deaths of the first generation of Gallo vintners, Tuccille backtracks to Joseph, Sr.'s early business ventures with his criminal brother Mike, eventually leading to the wine business. The family coped with Prohibition by selling grapes, jellies, and illegal booze, some of it through Al Capone's network in Chicago.

Ernest and Julio Gallo were left to build a legal wine business almost from the ground up. But the young men already had a great deal of experience and even greater ambitions. The E & J Gallo Winery went into business under the obsessive grip of Earnest Gallo, a man as ruthless and intolerant as his father, though not violent. "Gallo Be Thy Name" is primarily about that generation of Gallos, Earnest and Julio, who built the Gallo wine empire, and their younger brother Joseph, Jr. who was left behind but enjoyed his own successful businesses. The Gallos made a fortune, eventually becoming the largest winery in the world, by selling mass-market low-quality wine beverages like Paisano, Thunderbird, Andre, Ripple, Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, and generic wines.

"Gallo By Thy Name" is a sloppy attempt to remove the whitewash from the Gallo empire that Earnest Gallo was always so adamant at perpetuating. For example, he tried to suppress any suggestion of his family's Prohibition-era bootlegging. Since every winery in Sonoma and Napa Counties was bootlegging, this seems odd. Joseph, Sr.'s bootlegging isn't something that anyone but the Prohibition Bureau would have cared about, but there were later allegations by the FTC of anti-competitive practices, a media war with Caesar Chavez about labor relations in the 1970s, undue political influence, and the possibility that Earnest and Julio Gallo bilked their younger brother out of his inheritance.

The E & J Gallo Winery has come a long way from the quasi-legal and alienating tactics of its formative generation. Those were not nice men. They wouldn't stoop to entertain any concept of ethics, and, for all their love of the Gallo name, treated their own family worst of all. But Jerome Tuccille could only speak with members of Joseph, Jr.'s family, not Earnest's or Julio's descendants. His assertions are not exhaustively researched. There is little about operations or economics of the wine business and too much about personalities. The language is crude, with undermines its authority. There is probably a lot of dirt to dig on the Gallo family, but "Gallo Be Thy Name" is badly written, poorly documented, and cursory.

In my youth, I would often see Gallo TV commercials and thought they were somewhat cheesy. Later in life, I found I had a liking for fine wines and wouldn't touch a bottle of Gallo, correctly assuming that it was the mutt of the wine industry. Little did I know then (and what a surprise it was to me now) that Gallo is the world's largest wine producer. Everyone remembers Boone's Farm, but does everyone know it was produced by Gallo and was the highest selling wine in 1970? It's these kind of interesting facts that fill Jerome Tuccille's fascinating bio on the Gallo empire and it's somewhat dark, cloudy history.

The book is well-written and moves along nicely. Tuccille keeps your interest keen by presenting not only the family's ups and downs but also the industry as a whole and the Gallos' place in it, prior to prohibition and right up to the present. A wealth of side facts are also presented. As a wine lover, it was humorous for me to find out that they were the makers of Thunderbird and Ripple. As a humanist, it was horrifying to learn that the founder may or may not have been murdered by his sons and/or the mafia. As a nature lover it was outrageous to learn that they were responsible for the decimation of thousands of acres of California forest and somewhat relieved that they also have changed their ways and have become leaders in sustainable practices. There's a plethora of information about the family and the wine business that anyone who is interested in wine, business or family-owned empires will find rewarding here.

I'd recommend this book highly, it's nearly a page-turner and I read the final part in one sitting. I'd have given it five stars if it weren't for the fact that the forward is oddly long and unnecessarily tells far too much of the early history before the book begins. Tuccille should have kept that information for the body and in fact, it's repeated (with more detail) later on. A strange misstep in an otherwise fine book.

This reviewer is not a wine connoisseur. In fact, for religious reasons, I've never even had a glass of wine. That said, I found this book fascinating or at least the first 85% of it fascinating. Unfortunately after a marvelous story of a family working themselves to the bone to build the world's largest winery, the ending of the book is pretty much like reading a epilogue written like a company press release, which brings the story up-date-in a more or less dull and most boring manner.

There is an old folk saying that behind every rich family is a crime. That would definitely fit this story but mostly because one of the most unpopular laws in the history of mankind turned otherwise law-abiding citizens into boot legers. Prohibition was a piece of do-gooder legislation that was doomed to fail even before it officially became the law of the land. The public ignored it in mass, juries refused to convict accused violators of it, the huge tax revenue that was once financing most of the government was turned over to mobsters who then became very rich and powerful folk heroes. In fact, it was the need to get the tax revenue back that encouraged the government to get rid of the bad law so they could tax the heck out of liquor sales to fund FDR's depression programs.

Brothers Joe and Mickey Gallo wanted to make wine and Prohibition pretty much forced them to break the law in order to achieve their goal. Mickey became known as the "West Coast Al Capone." The great crime mentioned earlier involved the mysterious murder-suicide of Joe and his wife. Their two dogs were also killed at their deserted ranch where they had suddenly moved, fled, shortly before they died. Their families thought that they had moved because they owed a lot of money to the wrong people? The real facts of this so-called murder suicide were never fully examined in spite of many loose ends, conflicting stories and facts such as Mrs. Gallo mailing in the annual real estate taxes for the ranch on the same morning of their deaths. They also had considerable assets and cash so neither robbery or debt collection would be likely reasons for their deaths. Joe also had a nasty and animated argument with his son Ernest the day before the deaths of he and his wife.

That question is the subject of the first and in many ways most interesting book of the entire volume. There are a total of five so-called books included in this 269-page tome.

Ernest and Julio Gallo were driven in their ambition and they both lived to see their dreams come true. Ernest died at age 97 in 2007.

Ernest and Julio were also greedy and appear to have cut their younger brother Joe out of his one-third interest in the parents estate, which was the source of all the family court fights that followed. The legal battles destroyed family unity but all the family businesses continued forward and turned into the juggernaut it still remains today.

Even for a non-drinker like myself, I found this book to be a page-turner. I would only stop reading when my eyes got too blurry to read or I was distracted. I didn't want to miss a single detail of the remarkable story of hard work and American enterprise. Ernest and Julio were also equal opportunity political contributors. Ernest was a Democrat supporter; Julio was the family Republican donor. The reader will find familiar names who were large recipients of political contributions such as Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Leon Panetta, Pete Wilson and Barbara Boxer, just to name a few. The Gallo family of wine makers literally changed the physical landscape of California. They actually bull dozed the hills and old growth forests until they fit the best possible contour for growing various varieties of grapes. This is a good tale. After finishing this book the reader will never think of Gallo wines in the same way. It's an incredible story.