Men took all of the fun out of wine Whether a particular vintage is heady or earthy or “precocious” may mean everything to the (mostly male) collectors and sommeliers of the world, but it’s of little consequence when you’re looking for something delicious to serve with grilled salmon at your next dinner party. In the regions where vintners have grown grapes for as long as anyone can remember, a simple bottle of wine is as much of a basic, quotidian staple on a dinner table as a fork. Wine maker Gina Gallo, a member of America’s first family of wine (granddaughter to Julio, grand-niece to Ernest), would like to bring the whole overthought and overwrought experience of buying and drinking wine back to its yummy roots.
“It’s all about what happens at the table,” says Gallo, who has snuck out of a meeting concerning the latest batch of the Gallo family’s famed Two Rock Chardonnay, one of its Gallo Family Vineyards labels, to talk to BeE WOMAN. Gallo is quickly becoming the very public, very modern face of one of California’s oldest wineries. And her approach to the business is distinctly female, as savvy and unpretentious as the wines she sets out to create. “Our goal is to make a wine for every occasion.”
Back in the 1930s, the Gallo brothers found some pre-Prohibition era literature on wine making in the musty basement of the Modesto, CA, public library. Seventy-five years later, their children and grandchildren are running and operating the largest family-owned winery in America. Today, thirteen members of the Gallo clan work for the business— printing labels, operating a glass factory that makes the bottles, tending to vineyards, or marketing and selling their dozens of wines in 90-odd countries around the world. As for Gina, she’s making internationally recognized wines (like the Two Rock Chardonnay mentioned above). And she’s helping the company make great strides in updating their ’70s-era gallon-jug reputation among a new generation of wine drinkers, garnering accolades like “Winery of the Year” at the San Francisco International Wine Competition along the way.
It’s a job, she says, that was made for a woman.
“Making wine is all about long term thinking and patience. Because of the patience, it’s a wonderful area for women.” Though there have been female wine makers at Gallo for at least 30 years, and Gina worked for one of them at the family’s tiny, experimental winery making small batches when she started in the family business, she is the first one with the Gallo name. “Because of the patience, it’s a wonderful natural area for women. Making wine is a little bit like raising children, in some ways. It takes nurturing.”
For example, it can take years to see if your hard work has paid off, from planting the seed, growing the grapes, to seeing the product you created through to maturation. “You’re waiting for their first breath, their first steps. People who have kids understand how quickly that time can go by. In the end it’s all so rewarding.” Her mentor, master wine maker Marcello Monticelli (an old friend and colleague of her grandfather’s who’s practically part of the family), taught her his time-tested technique—selecting and blending grapes, how to ferment and age a wine to perfection—and he stressed that attitude, including sensitivity and creativity, both essential to good parenting, are also key elements for making good wine.
Gina remembers growing up in Sonoma a hundred yards from her grandparents, gathering around what must have been a tremendous table (she has seven siblings alone), listening to her father and her grandfather discussing the business. Though at the time she would have much rather been outside spending warm summer nights playing in the vineyards, 7p.m. was dinnertime and everyone was expected to be there “no matter what.” Even now, with a steadily growing brood of nieces, nephews and cousins, they do their best to corral the group with some regularity.
“We had dinner at least once a week with my grandparents. We sat and listened to the stories. You learn how to express yourself from your family, and wine was always around me, around the dinner table,” she says. “We all just wanted to be a part of it. I just loved the whole farming aspect of it. There is an immediacy, an intimacy, in dealing with the living vine, with staying in touch with wind and soil and rain. And I saw everything they were doing to build for the future, always thinking five or 10 years out. When it comes to agriculture and business, it’s very smart to think that way.”
Maybe letting women take more control of the making and distribution of wine is another long-term strategy: According to Gallo, research indicates that 65 percent of wine is purchased by women.
“There are more women in the wine business than there ever have been. I think the industry sees the research and gives women increasing responsibility for the product.”
Wine writers Andrea Immer and Leslie Sbrocco are two women Gallo acknowledges for making it their passion to inform other women about wine and how to make sense of the potentially daunting process of buying and enjoying wine. And Wild Women on Wine (which promotes itself as the source for “wine, cheese, chocolate, friends & fun”) an organization that joins female wine-lovers together at events across the country, is another favorite of Gallo’s. It’s that sense of uncomplicated fun, the old liter-and-a-half jug of Burgundy that the brand was built on in the ’60s and ’70s, that Gina wants to restore even while she’s creating wines that appeal to the most sophisticated palette. “
In America, wine wasn’t so traditional. It wasn’t a part of the lifestyle when my grandfather started making wine,” she says. “They’re Italian, so it was always part of their lives. But starting out, it was very important to them to create very simple, easy, fun, accessible wines to introduce people to it. I love high-end wines. I love making them. I love to try them. But when it comes down to it everyone wants less complication in wine.”
Her goal, it seems, is to create wine that makes people want to sit around the dinner table a little longer, savoring every morsel of food and conversation along with it.
“I saw in my grandparents and parents that they did what they loved with passion and a vision. I knew if I was going to be serious about an occupation I needed to feel in me that excitement and energy for what I was doing.
“What’s most important to me, given the way we grew up, is getting people around the table,” she says. “You learn so much there.”
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