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E&J Gallo Winery

Posted by James Turnbull, Sunday, 19th June 2005

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The largest wine producer in the world, E&J Gallo Winery in Modesto, CA. The building is huge but it’s the tanks that are worth looking at -there must be a lot of wine in there!

Wine

Thanks: MattBrown

13 Responses to 'E&J Gallo Winery'

  1. 1. Dom says:

    mmmm…….where’s the vineyard?…

  2. 2. Peter says:

    The vineyards probably are located elsewhere in the area, with the grapes trucked into the processing center. Gallo wines are are *not,* as the French would say, _mise en bouteille au chateau_.

  3. 3. Kevin O'Mara says:

    I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there’s even wine in there. There’s probably quite a bit of wine-colored liquid, but no wine.

  4. 4. johnnycat says:

    I wouldn’t call it “wine”. “Wino-fuel” is probably more appropriate.

  5. 5. Peter says:

    Gallo also makes the infamous “wine” Thunderbird
    http://www.bumwine.com/tbird.html

  6. 6. Jon says:

    You don’t realize how much something is consumed until you see a picture of factory that is so big…

    Crazy.

  7. 7. marsh says:

    This is the McDonald’s of wine. This is the amerification of the thousands of years old culture of producing probably the most fantastic drink mankind has ever had.

    From my point of view, this is disgusting. I’d never buy such a “wine” (yuk!) even if it costs only 10% of a real wine.

    This really sucks!

  8. 8. Papapenguin says:

    There is a really cool Californian “frozen” lake/reservoir just South West:

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    Some very nice rock formations as well.

  9. 9. Chip says:

    Wow. I’ve been known to snarkily refer to “the tank farms of Ernest and Julio Gallo”, and now I see how right I was.

  10. 10. MattBrown says:

    You might be surprised that Gallo doesn’t produce all garbage. In wine alone, they have almost 30 different labels. Have you tried Rancho Zabaco? That’s actually Gallo, even though they hide the fact. I’m sure most of the labels are bad, but not all.

    I definitely wouldn’t say this is the “amerification” of a culture or producing wine. If that were the case, what are the good American wineries doing?

    On the whole, however, I agree with the assessment of normal Gallo wine. I was in Belgium and saw an isle in a grocery store with the label “California Wine” and all I saw was Gallo. I was pretty sad that was how the rest of the world saw us. On the other hand, more of the good stuff for me! :)

  11. 11. Lee Bennett says:

    Papapenguin - actually, it’s not frozen. If you zoom in all the way, you can see that the sun just happened to be reflecting back during that portion of the picture.

  12. 12. Jonathan says:

    lmfao… My dad works there. I live in modesto. :) :) The vineyard is on the otherside of town. One of the vineyards anyways. It’s some big vine fields.

  13. 13. Jonathan says:

    oops, one more thing about the place. The hot end of the plant is where they form the glass bottles. The bottles get as hot as lava so the entire wharehouse is at about 130 degrees year round long. Very dangerous. :)

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