Winemaker Julio Gallo Dies in Car Crash

Wine baron Julio Gallo, who along with his brother Ernest founded what is now the largest winery in the world, was killed Sunday when his Jeep plunged off a remote, hilltop road on his son’s ranch in San Joaquin County. He was 83.

Julio Gallo--whose personal fortune was believed to exceed $300 million--was the winemaker half of the lucrative sibling partnership who parlayed a small family business into a company that sells one of every four bottles of wine in the United States.

In six decades of winemaking, Gallo pioneered cheap table wines that became hugely popular, making household names out of some Gallo products such as Thunderbird, Hearty Burgundy, Andre, Boone’s Farm and the Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

“They revolutionized the American wine business,” said food and wine critic Colman Andrews.

“They brought a level of sophistication--which may sound like a strange word to use for them--to the production and marketing of mass-market wines.”

He recalled a pair of quotes often attributed to the brothers: Julio said, “I will make all the wine you can sell,” and Ernest replied, “I will sell all the wine you can make.”

Gallo’s wife, Aileen, and two granddaughters were also in the new Jeep Wrangler when it rolled 30 feet down an embankment and landed upright in a shallow pond.

Shortly before 4 p.m., Gallo was taken by helicopter to Memorial Medical Center in Modesto, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, said nursing supervisor Elaine Day.

“He apparently died of chest injuries,” she said.

Aileen Gallo, 80, suffered a fractured sternum and broken ribs. She was in serious condition at Eden Hospital Medical Center in Castro Valley, said hospital spokeswoman Cassandra Phelps. Granddaughter Gina Gallo, 26, sustained fractured ribs and was in fair condition, said Phelps.

The second granddaughter, Aime Gallo, walked away from the accident unharmed. She had to hike more than two miles to summon help to the accident site, which was seven miles from the nearest road, said Tracy fire captain Larry Fragoso. The ranch is about 65 miles east of San Francisco.

“Apparently, he was going down an incline on a single-lane, rough terrain road and the vehicle either slid or he lost control,” said Fragoso.

The investigation will be handled by the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, he said.

Since 1986, it had been Julio Gallo’s project to upgrade the winery’s image with the production and marketing of high-quality, more expensive, award-winning vintage varietal wines, such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, to “change the way you think about Gallo,” their advertising campaign announced.

Ellen Hawkes, author of a new book, “Blood and Wine,” about the Gallo dynasty and the two reclusive brothers, said Ernest Gallo headed marketing and sales for the firm, whose annual global sales hit an estimated $849 million in 1992, and Julio Gallo headed up winemaking and production, and grower relations.

Julio Gallo “always wanted to focus more attention on making fine wines and upgrading the image. I think he was also much more interested in developing fine wines and blends that would be more attractive,” Hawkes said.

He had been spending more time in the Sonoma County vineyards growing the varietal grapes. “It had become his real passion, and he and Robert (his son) were concentrating on those vineyards,” said Hawkes.

But it was different decades ago, among wine-resistant Americans. The Gallos made their mark, according to Impact, a trade letter published in New York, by recognizing “early on that the majority of Americans were unfamiliar with wine and did not much care about corks or barrel aging. In fact, they reasoned, those factors were intimidating to neophyte wine drinkers.”

The company remained one of the largest privately held consumer product firms in the nation, as the Gallos kept a firm hand on virtually every aspect of production, growing what grapes it did not buy, made its own bottles, controlled shipping and distribution, and spent millions every year on promoting its products.

But the stubbornly reclusive Gallos were drawn into the spotlight in the 1980s after they sued their younger brother, Joseph Jr., to stop him from marketing cheese under a Joseph Gallo label.

The elder brothers claimed copyright infringement; Joseph Jr. said he had a right to use his own name.

In a countersuit, Joseph Jr.’s attorney argued, according to Hawkes, that old court records showed that the wine business had not entirely originated with the two elder brothers, but with their father. Thus, Joseph Jr., who inherited a one-third interest in the parents’ estate after their 1933 murder-suicide, was entitled to a third of the winery, the suit argued.

But in 1988, Joseph Jr.’s countersuit for his share in the winery was dismissed.

And in 1989, another federal judge dismissed arguments that Joseph Gallo has the right to his own name as a trademark. The judge said that because of his own misleading advertising, “there is substantial evidence of actual confusion” among retailers and consumers who believed the wines and cheeses to be made by the same firm. He also pointed to notes by a Joseph Gallo Farms marketing strategist about trying “to capitalize on the Gallo name and image.”

During the rancorous proceedings, the winemaking brothers accused Joseph Jr. of operating a rat-infested cheese plant, and Joseph Gallo’s lawyers declared that the brothers were making cheap wine to sell to drunks.

The court order did let Joseph Gallo Jr. use the name in less conspicuous type as long as a new brand name or logo was used.

Characteristically, Ernest and Julio’s only comment was two sentences long: “The court has ruled in our favor, after extensive review of all the facts and law in the case. We are pleased the matter has been brought to a conclusion.”

The company was always close-mouthed about its operations, and the Gallos preferred, as the phrase went, “to let our wines speak for themselves.”

Gallo’s first communications director, hired in 1974, once described his job to a Modesto Bee reporter as “the Gallo spokesman, who is unavailable for comment.”

On Sunday, calls placed by The Times to Gallo for more information about Julio Gallo and the fatal accident were not returned.

Hawkes said that Julio was the brother who, in a closed-door meeting with his two brothers during the lawsuit, sobbed to Joseph Jr., “Do you remember our mother’s final words? All she wanted for us was to get along.”

The accident was “only reaffirming my sense of what a tragedy the lawsuit had been, that three brothers who had been very close were wrenched apart by this lawsuit. Whatever minor hope there had been for any reconciliation is now obviously gone,” Hawkes said.

He is survived by his wife, two children, Robert and Susann, and several grandchildren.

Joseph Gallo, honored in 1975 by the American Society of Enologists’ merit award 1975, said, “Nobody can make good wine out of bad grapes, but what we don’t want to do is make bad wine out of good grapes.”