Gallo Be Thy Name The Inside Story Of How One Family Rose To Dominate The Us Wine Market Jerome Tuccille Tuccille by Jerome Tuccille [tuccille, Jerome] 9781597775908, 1597775908 instant download after payment.

How did a secretive family with political and organized crime connections rise from near poverty after Prohibition and conquer the multibillion-dollar U.S. wine market? Consider that the Gallo family of California, notorious for selling plonk wine in gallon jugs just 30 years ago, now accounts for nearly one-third of the wine consumed in the United States, either under its own name or through labels controlled by the Gallo family. Ernest and Julio Gallo, the deceased founders of E & J Gallo Winery, always maintained that they taught themselves how to make wine by reading a pamphlet on the subject after Prohibition. Their father, Joseph, was actually connected with the Capone mob in Chicago and supplied grapes and wine to Capone and other mob figures from his vineyards in California. Another piece of Gallo family history downplayed by Ernest and Julio is that their uncle Mike, their father’s brother, was known as the “West Coast Al Capone” and a “notorious East Bay bootlegger.” He served time in San Quentin and elsewhere for various racketeering charges, including bootlegging, bribery, and running bunko games. Ernest and Julio’s father, the Gallo patriarch, allegedly murdered his wife, Susie, in 1933, just as Prohibition was coming to an end, and then took his own life because of financial problems. But rumors have persisted for decades that Joseph and Susie were actually murdered. Was it a mob hit? Did their sons have advance knowledge of their violent end—and perhaps even play a role in it? These are just a few of the Gallo family secrets that Tuccille investigates in detail and covers in this new biography.