Food & Drink: A Watch on the Wine

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FOOD & DRINK

Not long ago, the average American thought that people who drank wine with their meals were either oddballs or foreigners—or both. The wine drinker, in short, was assumed to be either a recent immigrant who had not yet adjusted to the American way of life or a rich sybarite with exotic tastes. Exotic, because wine naturally meant French wine.

But in the last decade, more and more ordinary Americans have been discovering that a taste for wine is both respectable and rewarding. Where once a bottle of wine was reserved for special occasions, it is now often no more unusual on the table than a pitcher of milk. What's more, 95% of the wine that Americans drink is made in the U.S.

With the notable exception of champagne (largely produced in upper New York State), nearly all U.S. wines come from the 22,000 vineyards of California. Americans have discovered that many California wines are often better than European vins ordinaires, and that a few of them rank with the good (if not the best) French wines.

The Count. The founding father of the California wine industry was a wandering Hungarian named Agostin Haraszthy, who appeared in San Diego one day in 1849. California wine was then largely made from the sweet, heavy purple grape brought from Spain by the Franciscan monks. "The Count,'' as Haraszthy was called, did not like it. He persuaded the legislature that the state's wine needed improvement, and in 1861, he took off for Europe, returned with 200,000 cuttings of Europe's finest vines—a favor that California later returned.*

In the next decades, winemaking became a tidy local industry. But when Prohibition came, the vintners either ground out tons of grape juice or sadly closed down their presses and let their plump grapes wrinkle up into raisins. After repeal, the vineyards recovered only slowly, did not begin to produce wine they could be proud of till the late 1930s.

The man who has since done most to popularize wine in the U.S. is Ernest Gallo, 52, president of the E. & J. Gallo Winery Corp. in Modesto. Until recently, United Vintners, run by Gallo's rival Louis Petri, was the biggest producer of cheap wines in the nation, but Gallo has been coming up fast and this year he hopes to peddle 40 million gallons to make himself undisputed top bottle in the business. His methods shock the traditional winemakers. His stainless-steel vats and presses are by far the most technologically advanced in the world ("You won't find a stick of wood in our winery"); he pumps his wine by the millions of gallons through canvas hoses from tank to tank. He has taken to radio and television to advertise his wares with singing commercials ("Ripple—the wine with that ring-a-ding flavor . . . Oh-oh, that ring-a-ding taste!''; "Everybody gooes, for Gypsy Ro-ose!").

Sneaky Pete. Gallo has no use for his premium-wine competitors, who are chiefly concentrated in the Napa Valley. "The reason people think Napa Valley wine is better," snorts he, "is simply because it costs more. The wine snobs like it because it costs more. The so-called fine wineries' audience is composed of wine snobs. Well, let 'em have each other."