It’s unfortunate when you emigrate halfway across the globe with your Italian wine-making skills, only to find there’s a growing movement in your adopted homeland of America to ban alcohol sales. That’s what happened to author Kevin Ferguson’s great-grandfather, John Gemello, in the early part of the twentieth century.
It was 1914 and Gemello had just run into an old buddy, Giovanna Beltramo, from Piedmont, Italy. They just happened to be in the same little tavern in the same little town in Northern California. What were the chances?
Beltramo, more than twenty years older than Gemello, had established himself at a prominent winery in California and so the two men had a lot to talk about. Plus, Beltramo kindly offered to loan Gemello enough money to bring his wife and daughter to California from Italy.
That’s one of the many fascinating stories in Ferguson’s forthcoming book, Rain on the Montebello Ridge, a memoir about health, aging, and winemaking.
Bristling with excitement, Gemello and two partners purchased a vineyard in 1917, but as the war ended and Prohibition was enacted, they sold it, taking away a nice profit. With the cash, Gemello bought a fleet of trucks and began delivering his vegetables to homes in the Santa Clara valley. Each day, however, each week, every year, Gemello dreamed about buying another vineyard, opening his own winery. And then one month after Prohibition ended in December 1933, he did just that: with the help of his seventeen-year-old son, Mario, Gemello opened the Gemello Winery in Mountain View, California.
As Gemello experimented with different grapes, he created and bottled claret, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, petit serah, and pinot noir. He tasted this one and that one, rejected a few, improved others, stamped his approval on some. A label was created. A winery was born and took its place in the Santa Clara Valley.
John Gemello retired ten years later, but his son Mario continued operating the winery for the next thirty-eight years, after which he sold the Gemello wine label to another family member. After eight more years, in the 1990’s, the winery was torn down and a park was built in the spot with a plaque commemorating the history of the area, including the Gemello winery.
Then it happened.
In 2002 at the age of 86, Mario Gemello received a call from a journalist with Wine & Spirits magazine telling him that a bottle of his wine had won a prestigious award. A re-enactment of an event depicted in the movie Bottle Shock had brought together a group of wine writers, winemakers, and collectors for a blind tasting of fourteen wines from the early 1970's, and Gemello’s wine had ranked number one with fourteen of the sixteen judges.
It was a slam dunk - and Gemello had known instantly which wine had won. “Oh yes,” he said, casually but with a great deal of pride, “Martin Ray planted that vineyard up on Pierce Road in Saratoga.” More than thirty years later, Gemello knew exactly where the grapes had come from.
I asked Ferguson if he ever got a taste of the wine.
“Oh yes,” he said. “When we were kids, we got a taste straight from the barrel.”
“And?” I ask.
“A little sour,” Ferguson laughs.
No matter. One of the wine-tasting judges would soon write in the New York Times that the Gemello cabernet was “obscure and legendary”, and Gemello agreed. “It was one of the best vintages my grandfather made,” he said, “from one of the best cabernet vineyards in the area.”
If you’d like to read more about this story, along with the story of Gemello’s wife who, at age 101, still does her daily walk in her neighborhood park, follow Kevin’s blog at https://gemello.substack.com/ . Connect with him on Twitter at @gemello100
Photograph of John Gemello, age 98 in 1980. Used by permission from Kevin Ferguson.
