4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
》 OBITUARY
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2007
California mogul dies at 97
Ernest Gallo leaves behind second largest wine company
BY MICHELLE LOCKE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BERKELEY, Calif. — Ernest Gallo, who parlayed $5,900 and a wine recipe from a public library into the world's largest winemaking empire, died Tuesday at his home in Modesto. He was 97.
"He passed away peacefully this afternoon surrounded by his family," said Susan Hensley, vice president of public relations for E.&J. Gallo Winery.
Gallo, who would have been on March 18, was born near Modesto, a then sleepy San Joaquin Valley town about 80 miles east of San Francisco. He and his late brother and business partner, Julio, grew up working in the vineyard owned by their immigrant father who came to America from Italy's famed winemaking region of Piedmont.
They founded the E.&J. Gallo
Winery in 1933, at the end or Prohibition, when they were still mourning the murder suicide deaths of their parents. Ernest and Julio rented a ramshackle building, and everybody in the family pitched in to make ordinary wine for 50 cents a gallon — half the going price. The Gallos made $30,000 the first year.
It grew to become the world's largest wine company by volume, a title since taken by Constellation Brands of New York. But Gallo remains second, selling an estimated 75 million cases under more than 40 labels.
"My brother Italo and I worked to improve the quality of wines from California and to put fine wine on American dinner tables at a price people could afford." Mr. Gallo told The Modesto Bee on his 90th birthday. "We also worked to improve the reputation of California wines here and overseas."
Ernest directed sales, devised
marketing strategies and kept a short leash on distribution, Julio, who died in 1993, made the wine.
Gallo was no less tough on the people who worked for him as on those he battled for business. He also demanded total loyalty from his employees. In 1986, when he learned that two longtime Gallo executives were secretly planning to buy a winery of their own, he fired them on the spot.
Gallo was a courtly man who affected Old World manners. But in business he was tenacious, shrewd, aggressive and secretive. He shunned publicity. The reason for the secretiveness, many of their former associates said, was the way his parents had died.
Fresno County records say their rather, Joseph, shot their mother, Susie, to death in June 1933, then killed himself. That was two months before the founding of the winery.
George Nikitin/ASSOCIATED PRESS
George Martin/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wine magistrate Ernest Gallo speaks to delegates at the 23rd general assembly of International Office of the Vine and Wine on Aug. 10, 1993, in San Francisco. Gallo died Tuesday at his home in Modesto, Calif. He was 97.
>> OFF THE SHELVES
ReNu faces second lens solution recall
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The optical products maker also reported a modest drop in fourth-quarter and full-year sales in 2006, citing sluggish contact lens sales amid a slower-than expected recovery from last spring's recall of Moistureloc, which was blamed for an outbreak of severe fungal eye infections.
ROCHESTER, N.Y.— Bausch & Lomb Inc., already humbled by a worldwide recall of its ReNa with MoistureLoc contact lens solution, said Tuesday it was recalling about 1.5 million bottles of ReNa MultiPius because trace amounts of iron could cause the cleaner to lose effective ness earlier than normal.
The company said it had carried out a limited voluntary recall of 12 lots of its ReNo MultiPlus solution after getting three customer reports of discolored solution.
No one was reported hurt, and the company believes that virtually all of the solution, made about a year ago at its plant in Greenville, S.C., has already been used by lens wearers.
About a million bottles of the popular brand were distributed in the United States and another 500,000 in Canada, Korea, Taiwan and Latin America. The company has notified the Food and Drug Administration and regulators in the other affected countries of the recall.
"I want to emphasize that this is
completely unrelated to and different from the Moisture.loc recall' company spokeswoman Barbara Kelley said.
"There have been no serious adverse events associated with this occurrence, and the possibility of a serious adverse event is remote."
Bauss & Lomb determined the discoloration was caused by trace amounts of iron found in a single batch of raw material from an outside supplier. As a result, it said, the affected lots could have a shorter shelf life than the two-year expiration date.
"From what they're describing, the event that occurred was relatively minor," said Penny Asbell, a professor of ophthalmology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "It's definitely a different story from Moisture1oc. We now understand that certain conditions led to solution to be a very poor disinfectant. And it seems obvious now but quite honestly it wasn't obvious at the time."
"The take home message from this event is most people do very well with contact lenses, but there are some risks and they can cut down those risks by following the manufacturers' recommendations."
Because Bausch & Lomb has yet to close its accounting process for the year, it cannot estimate earnings per share, but it expects U.S. operations to be unprofitable because of the recall.
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