Here's a sobering statistic I read the other day: Gallo Wine Co. makes or imports close to one of every four bottles of wine Americans drink. I'm no statistician, but that has to be a staggering number, pardon the phrase.
Although the Gallo family had been in the grape-growing business since the 19th century, it was brothers Ernest and Julio who hit it big with a '57 Thunderbird -- the wine, not the car.
Since then, brands with the Gallo imprint have included Boone's Farm, Ripple, Night Train, Anapamu, Frei Brothers, Indigo Hills, Louis M. Martini, MacMurray Ranch, Mirassou, Napa Valley Vineyards, Rancho Zabaco, Turning Leaf, Redwood Creek, Bella Sera, McWilliams Hanwood Estate, Red Bicyclette, DaVinci, Black Swan, Ecco Domani, Whitehaven, Carlo Rossi, Peter Vella, Livingston Cellars and Wild Vines, among others.
Some of those labels -- Louis M. Martini, MacMurray, DaVinci, Rancho Zabaco, Whitehaven, for instance -- make some nice wines, and it's a good bet that many of today's hoity-toity wine aficionados were introduced to wine by a Gallo product.
It was Herman of the long-gone-but-never-forgotten Herman's Restaurant in Fayetteville, Ark., who gave me my first significant taste of wine. It was Carlo Rossi Paisano. It was, I thought then, a little slice of heaven.
