Review of ‘Gallo Be Thy Name’
My review (download PDF) of Jerome Tuccille’s recent release Gallo Be Thy Name: The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the U.S. Wine Market, appears in the newest issue of the Journal of Wine Economics, just released today.
Tuccille is a good writer, and neither fawns over his subject nor takes needless swipes. He and the Gallo boys definitely grabbed my attention from the beginning, and held it until the end. A background snip:
The “inside story” of the Gallo wine empire and its progenitors, brothers Ernest and Julio, Gallo Be Thy Name is an engaging and thoughtful look at the making of the world’s largest privately held, family-owned winemaker. Jerome Tuccille, author of more than two-dozen books—including respective biographies of Donald Trump and Alan Greenspan, four novels, and several how-to guides—mostly succeeds in the endeavor. While readers of true crime and celebrity tell-alls will no doubt revel in Tuccille’s tales of murder, familial rancor, deception, and mafia dealings, devotees of wine economics will appreciate Tuccille’s faithful recounting of the Gallo family’s saga as a story of two sons of an Italian-immigrant family rebuilding the American wine market, one jug at a time. From exposing the Gallo family’s well-guarded successes during Prohibition to its post-Prohibition expansion and subsequent boom as the result of savvy marketing and distribution decisions, Tuccille shows Ernest and Julio together possessed a unique ability to respond to the demands of the American wine consumer across more than seven turbulent decades.
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Perhaps the most interesting competitive advantage Gallo Winery enjoyed was the result of familial competition between the brothers themselves. It’s a story of specialization Adam Smith himself would love. Ernest’s goal, writes Tuccille, was to sell more wine than Julio could produce, while Julio’s aim was to produce more than Ernest could sell. When Ernest outdid Julio in this respect, the brothers began to buy grapes from other Napa growers so that supply could keep up with demand. While Tuccille makes clear that Ernest was a businessman nonpareil, it’s possible Julio, the expert winemaker, lost the competition because his heart was elsewhere. From early on in their venture, Julio had hoped that the American wine palate—dulled by the strong liquor and sweet wine prevalent during Prohibition—might recover its senses so that he could make the dry, high-quality, varietal wines he preferred. Still, the market forced Julio for decades to produce a stable of cheap, sweet, nondescript reds and whites. Julio’s lifelong wish would not come to fruition until near the time of his death several decades later.
Buy the book here. Subscribe to the journal–which has published some really interesting research (this, for example)–here. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I have consistently had a succession of 1.5L jugs of Carlo Rossi Paisano on my kitchen countertop since I read the book, and question your sanity if you, too, do not do the same.
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