The Passing of Legendary Old Vine Champion Don Galleano: Winemaker Carol Shelton, Queen of Zin, Weighs in on the Man and His Legacy

Don Galleano, 2014

Not many wine lovers know that Southern California and Los Angeles were the first California wine country. Fewer still believe that remnants of the world of sweet wines and sherries lives on or that one could have 300 acres of organic dry farmed Zinfandel, some of it 80 year old bush vines growing in sand by the freeway. 

But for Don Galleano, this was a lived reality. The patriarch of an historic holdout in the Cucamonga Valley AVA, he presided over vines preserved due to his love and passion - until his death on June 2.

I had the good fortune to meet him once and to interview him in his home, an experience I will never forget. 

For starters, he greeted me with a plastic water tumbler sized glass - a red one like you might have had at your grandmother's house - and it was filled with Zinfandel. No four ounce pours here.

I felt like I was immersed in a world I could only have read about in wine history books. No history book could possibly match the experience of talking and drinking with him.  

First of all, what wine guy invites you into his home to drink and talk while he's sitting in his recliner ?

I loved the fact that he had an old wine country tourist map of the region showing The Road to Romance circa the 1940s.

I marveled at many details in Jon Bonne's 2014 article. He wrote that the dry farmed roots of the José Lopez vines, "push 30 feet or more into the sandy soils, strewn with granite rocks washed from the mountains above."  

Galleano's sherries reflect Old California.
 Its gorgeous, sumptuous Rose of Peru
is a unique tribute to an historical grape.

Galleano's old vine vineyard

We talked about water - he was on the local water district board for years and he knew the ins and outs of the allocation system thoroughly. 

He dry farmed all of his vines - no conflict of interest there. 

Under his watch, the winery certified all of its vines as organic.

In 1995, locals got their own Cucamonga Valley AVA. The region had once grown 40,000 acres of grapes, but by 2000 had only 1,200 left. Galleano's were the only organic vineyards among them. 

While most of the vines were Zin, others were Carignane, Grenache, Mission, Mourvedre and Palomino. Galleano worked with Cal Poly Pomona to make sure cuttings from historic vines were preserved at the college's Horsehill Vineyard.   

Galleano's grandfather founded the winery in 1933. 

A community minded leader, Galleano was very engaged in local groups and served as a judge in wine competitions, where he was also an influential presence.

INTERVIEW WITH CAROL SHELTON

Sonoma winemaker Carol Shelton, often called the queen of Zin, produces an outstanding Zinfandel from the historic Jose Lopez Vineyard, which was planted in 1918. The tiny bush vines still bear delicious, tiny sweet berries. (I was there just before harvest once and tasted them for myself. They grow unpretentiously on the side of the freeway).

Last week I spoke with Carol Shelton, who bought grapes from Don and his son Dominic, to make her Monga Zin ($26) about Don and his legacy. 

Carol Shelton with grapes at the José Lopez Vineyard, planted just before Prohibition

What was Don like?

He was a cool guy. He was kind of like a mafia don. We used to call him The Don or Donald.

He wore his pants high up on his waist with a belt and his hair was slicked back and he wore a turtleneck a lot of the time. Marlon Brando had nothing on him. He was great.

How did he work to preserve his old vines?

Don was passionate about protecting his vineyard and making sure it got recognized and he was fighting to get it made a historic landmark so it's a big loss. I don't think he had finished that job. So that’s really sad. 

He got the winery property landmarked. I registered the vineyard in the Historic Vineyard Society but he didn’t manage to get the government to name the vineyard an historic landmark which would have protected it from future development. 

They've already lost a good portion - probably two thirds - of the vineyard to development, because there weren't any freeways when it was planted, right? And they put ten lanes of Route 15 in, and then they put 210 in, which bisects the vineyard. And then there's all this new housing. There’s tremendous pressure to develop the land. The land is actually, I believe, owned by a rich Singapore businessman. I've never met him, I don't even know his name. I think he just leased the property to Donald and it was just a line on his income statement, you know, and he didn't really know what it was - just an asset. It was a much more valuable asset for housing.

José Lopez Vineyard 

What was his winery like?

The Galleano family has a 12 acre vineyard adjacent to their Mira Loma winery, which is kind of a sprawling place. Actually, every time I go there, I think, “Oh my God, I've just seen Pancho Villa with crossed bandoliers coming out, shooting, because it just looks like something out of old Mexico or something.

Don had great stories. Some of them would change a little bit every time he told them. 

I heard that the Jose Lopez vineyard was very old - it was planted in 1918. And then I heard different years in Don's subsequent retellings of the story.

He said that his property right there at the winery in Mira Loma was acquired in a poker game with one of Pancho Villa’s lieutenants - Esteban Cantu. They actually made a freeway exit for him.

Cantu was either one of Galleano's predecessors, and he owned the land around the winery. Then there was a big poker game, and he lost the land to Domenico Galleano. 

Don had a lot of colorful stories.

How did he die?

He contracted a virus about five years ago that was one of those weird things that took the doctors a long time to diagnose. He came very close to dying in the hospital, and it weakened his heart. So I think the biggest guess is that he died in his sleep when his heart gave out. 

He wasn't one for doing a lot of exercise and for taking care of himself. He smoked cigars. He drank. It was his lifestyle. He wasn't an alcoholic by any means. But he just definitely liked his lifestyle and he wasn't about to change it. And that's kind of what ultimately caused his demise.

  

Will the old vine plant material be saved?

As for the vineyard, there have been a few people that have taken tissue cuttings and propagated. Cal Poly Pomona and ZAP have some of the plant material. 

What, are there any of his wines that inspired you? Like his sherrys? I know you made that Tawny Monga once?

Well his Zin was your basic Dago Red. It was classic as an old school jug style. 

But his sherrys were really good. And that's how I got to know him when I worked for Windsor Vineyards, and we wanted to bottle port and sherry. 

I came down because he had some of the best stock in the country. So I went to see him once when I was doing a wine competition. So I flew in early and had a big tasting session with him and his winemaker, Jason Bushong (who’s up in Paso now). We tasted through all these different barrels and I'd say, “Okay, I want this one, this one this one, and skip those.” So then they loaded up a tanker and I took it back up north to Windsor. 

What he did with those sherries was amazing. He really had the handle on dessert wine.

He also farmed a lot of vineyards around the area. He had a real love for the heritage of the Cucamonga Valley.

So your Tawny Monga - was that inspired by his sweet wines? 

It was in a year that was very tough to harvest, because there was a terrible heat wave, and it’s a long story but the truck from the vineyard got a flat tire in the middle of a cell phone dead zone that was between Cucamonga and Temecula. 

For the first 10 or so years that I got the fruit, I had to crush in Temecula because of the glassy winged sharpshooter quarantine. So I got to know everybody down there.

The truck got stuck on Highway 15 and the guy had to walk out to get help. By the time we saw the truck, it was past eight o'clock at night. It had left the vineyard between 12 and one in the afternoon in a heat wave. The heat was radiating off the pavement. The fruit was a bit cooked, so we took the press fraction, fortified it and made port out of it. It made a damn good port.

Yes, I had some of that when I came to your place several years ago and I loved it.  I just absolutely adored it and I should try to get some more of that.

Make sure you get some from Galleano's place - he's got some really really good stuff. His cream sherry and Angelica are amazing.

Yes I have some Rose of Peru and a Mary Margaret sherry, which were his best.

His legacy was really amazing. It would be a great loss if it wasn't protected.

CELEBRATION OF LIFE PLANNED

Southern California friends of Don Galleano are planning a memorial service to celebrate his life. A date has not yet been announced.

Batonnage Forum Spotlights Women Made Wines at Sonoma Tasting: Meet the Ones Crushing It - Organically

 

It was perfect weather for a tasting, and Sonoma Broadway Farms was a great venue for Batonnage, the women in wine organization, to showcase 15 tables of women run wineries at a walk around tasting that displayed the enormous breadth of women's presence in the wine world. 

There was sparkling wine, there was natural wine, there was white wine, there was rosé and plenty of it. There was plenty of geeky winespeak, too, with inquiring minds wanting to know arcane points about winemaking. 

I went in search of organically grown wines. Initially I was chagrined by how many women were actually making wine using grapes sprayed with Roundup (their names will not be mentioned). It felt like the first time I got a speeding ticket from a woman cop. How unfair! But oh well. Life is full of learning. 

However, the producers featured here all had at least one wine from an organic vineyard and were finding more and more organic sources to buy grapes from. I was happy to raise a glass to that.

Birdhouse is the love child of winemakers Katie Rouse (left) and Corinne Rich (left) who met and fell in love when they were students at U.C. Davis where they each got a master's in viticulture and enology. 

CCOF certified Vista Luna Vineyard in Lodi (farmed by
Marcus Bokisch) is the source for their fresh, lively Verdelho.

Camins 2 is the brand birthed by Spanish born Mireia Taribo, educated in Barcelona, and Tara Gomez, a descendant of the Chumash tribe who studied winemaking at Fresno. Their winery is based in Lompoc, where they source a lovely Gruner Veltliner and a Syrah from the nearby Spear Vineyard (organic) in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. They're looking forward to releasing wine from the biodynamic vineyard Christy & Wise.

Erin Mitchell makes wine with her partner Randy Czech under their Unturned Stone wine label. 
The couple were the first to make wine from the unique coastal planting of Cabernet grapes at Waterhorse Ridge in Cazadero.

Their first white wine is a Sauvignon Musqué from Vecino Vineyard in Potter Valley. They also make a field blend, called The Stowaway, from another Mendocino vineyard, Buddha's Dharma, in Talmage.

Another up and coming vintner in the mostly organic lane is Terah Bajjalieh, who studied enology in Montpelier, France and worked briefly at Montinore Estate. Her sparkling Tempranillo was kickass. (It comes from Rorick Heritage Vineyard). She makes only 125 cases of wine so most of her current releases are sold out. Next year she's moving out of her Morgan Hill garage and upping production to 300 cases.

First Heat, Then Frost: 2021 Chablis and Rhone Wines Off the Menu? Climate Scientists Say Climate Change Increased Chance of France's Worst Wine Frost 60%, Losses Estimated at $4.85 Billion

Weather stations with March (left) high records broken and April (right) low records broken in 2021 in France. Source: Météo-France.

Chablis from the 2021 vintage may no longer be available on the menu. Nor Rhones. Nor Champagne. Or at least it will cost more - possibly a lot more. 

The frost that occurred in early April in France is, “probably the biggest agricultural disaster in the beginning of the 21st century,” according to experts at the French Ministry of Agriculture, resulting in billions in losses and reducing wine production for the 2021 vintage in key regions by as much as 90 percent.

Climate modeling scientists from the World Weather Attribution initiative say the risks of the extreme high spring temperatures causing early bud break - followed by early frosts - were increased 60 percent due to climate change. And, they say, this alarming trend is predicted to continue. (See full study here.)

The National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FNSEA) estimated that a third of the country’s overall wine production could be lost.

Climate scientists collaborating from four European countries calculated climate change's impacts on the early bud break/early frost debacle say it's the anthropogenic climate changes that are messing with Mother Nature.

Quoted in Euronews, Philippe Pellaton, President of the Inter-Rhone Association of winegrowers, said the frost means this year will result in "the smallest harvest of the Côtes du Rhône in the last 40 years." Burgundy reported at least 50 percent of the crop was lost. Chablis reported losses of 80 to 90 percent.

The new climate report details a sort of climate change induced traffic jam, where rising temperatures that bring early bud break also increase the dangers of running into early frosts, climate researchers said.

The study was authored by the World Weather Attribution initiative and conducted by an international group of scientists from the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena, and Météo-France.

Sadly, one of France's leading organic wine regions, the Languedoc-Roussillon, was among those hit hardest. Due to its Mediterranean climate, the southern region is one of the first to warm in the spring. 

In the Gard, Hérault and Aude, vintners said as much as 90 percent of the crop was lost in the worst hit areas.

One organic vintner, in Hérault, Émilie Faucheron posted a heart wrenching video about the frost, which was viewed by thousands throughout France, bringing the human element to the crisis reporting.

Slide of the Day: Energy Accounting - Nitrogen Fertilizer Versus Compost