ERNEST GALLO, 97

Other Brother Robert gets the point and a bottle of Thunderbird for alerting us to the death of this icon. From The New York Times:

Somber, secretive and seemingly humorless, with little more than a high school education, Mr. Gallo — working closely with his brother, Julio — created a wine empire that became one of the world’s largest.

While Julio, who died in an auto accident in 1993, preferred the winemaking, Ernest had a head for business. His entrepreneurial skills, instinctive command of marketing and distribution, and his compulsive need to be the best at what he did, created the large company that he controlled at the time of his death.

And the company, entirely family controlled, was indeed large. Industry analysts estimate that Gallo produces some 80 million cases of wine a year, which is about 220,000 cases or 2.64 million bottles every day. The company reportedly owns 10,000 acres of vineyards in California and buys grapes from hundreds of independent growers.

At his death, Gallo was worth an estimated $1.2 billion.