INDUSTRY: American Wine Comes of Age

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The wine boom is evidence of a growing ease and worldliness in American lifestyles, as foreign travel and rising affluence open new horizons of taste. Says Philip Seldon, editor of Vintage, a highly successful new wine magazine: "I think America is coming of age. We are becoming conscious of our sense of taste. Perhaps we are becoming more European. We are discovering that there is nothing wrong with self-satisfaction." Hugh Johnson, a British writer who belongs to that newly prominent group of taste arbiters, the professional wine critics, takes a less cosmic view: "Wine needs no apology. It is one of the good things of life. While hard liquor is drunk for its effect, wine is drunk patently for pleasure."

The chief beneficiary of this ferment is the U.S. wine industry, the world's sixth-largest producer (behind Italy, France, the Soviet Union, Spain and Argentina). Long considered to be pale imitations of their European cousins, American wines are rapidly gaining in quality and respect. Imports continue to rise, but more than 88% of all wine sold in the U.S. is homegrown. This year 43 new wineries have been opened. Thriving vineyards have grown up in some unlikely places: Maryland, Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Georgia. New York State produces one of every eleven bottles of wine made in the U.S. The state's sizable producers—Taylor, Canandaigua, Gold Seal and Widmer—are having record sales. For years, only native East Coast grapes could survive the harsh winters, but some smaller New York wineries, notably Vinifera and Bully Hill, are concentrating on wines made from hybrids of American and European grapes.

But the U.S. wine business is still dominated by a single state: California. Its 267 wineries produce 85% of the wine made in the U.S., and Californians individually drink about twice as much wine as other Americans. Grapes represent the Golden State's largest cash crop; in the past four years of heavy demand and rising labor costs, prices for premium Cabernet Sauvignon grapes have jumped from $305 a ton to about $ 1,000. They will rise still higher as a result of a tight supply. Because of a spring frost and August heat-wave damage, the 1972 California grape harvest, which was completed last month, was the smallest in 30 years. Those grapes are now fermenting, and when 1972 wines reach the market next year, some may carry price tags that are as much as 20% higher. In the Napa Valley, a prime growing region north of San Francisco, almost no land is left for new vineyards; enterprising home owners are planting grapevines on front lawns.

Just as one state dominates the industry, one company towers above the rest. The Gallo Winery sold 100 million gallons last year—almost half of all California wine and nearly twice as much as its nearest competitor, United Vintners. Family owned, the Gallo company is one of the nation's largest privately held firms, and one of its most secretive. Until its top executives were interviewed by TIME Correspondent Patricia Delaney, they had avoided contact with the press for years. By best estimates, the company had revenues of $250 million last year and reaped profits of $35 million to $40 million before taxes.

The men who own Gallo lock, stock and wine barrel are the brothers whose names are signed on many Gallo bottles: