{"id":6797,"date":"2017-02-03T05:03:59","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T12:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=6797"},"modified":"2017-02-03T05:56:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T12:56:23","slug":"killed-by-a-thunderbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/killed-by-a-thunderbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Killed by a Thunderbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gone and almost forgotten is Italian Swiss Colony<\/a> wine company: Once a giant of American wine, now a footnote for hoochstorians. Its historic birthplace, the Asti Winery in California, was recently devoured<\/a> in the all-consuming maw of E & J Gallo — bringing the story of ISC’s decline and fall full circle. <\/p>\n

Italian Swiss Colony was so-named because it was in fact founded by Italian and Swiss immigrants. Based in Asti in now-famous Sonoma County, ISC grew from humble beginnings to become the biggest winery in California, and among the best-selling winemakers in the country after Prohibition ended.<\/p>\n

In those days ISC cranked out cheap bulk juice for mass consumption. Their mascot was a yodeling, elderly gent in Alpine costume who spouted the catchphrase, “The little old winemaker — me!” The little old winemaker (voiced by actor Jim Backus<\/a>, who also voiced Mr. Magoo) starred in radio and TV commercials<\/a> that aired nationally, spreading the good word about Italian Swiss Colony’s fine products. <\/p>\n

Nipping at Italian Swiss Colony’s heels was up-and-comer E & J Gallo Winery of Modesto, California. Ernest Gallo’s stated goal was to turn his brand into the “Campbell Soup company of the wine industry”<\/a> — which necessarily meant the elimination of ISC. In 1952 Ernest actually plotted to buy out his much larger rival, but prudently backed off at the last minute. <\/p>\n

Everything changed in 1957 when Gallo rolled out Thunderbird<\/a>, “The American Classic,” granddaddy of the skid row bum wines. Italian Swiss Colony’s feeble response, when it finally came, was a knockoff called Silver Satin, a citrus-flavored white port just like Thunderbird. Silver Satin claimed to be “charcoal filtered” and boasted of being the “Perfect Cocktail Wine.”<\/a> But Silver Satin was no competition for the original, and ISC suddenly had a mortal rival at the top. <\/p>\n

Italian Swiss Colony didn’t go down right away. There were other battles ahead: When Gallo launched Boone’s Farm, ISC countered with a “tropical” flavored wine called Bali Hai<\/a> that gained something of a following. But over the years they couldn’t keep pace with Gallo’s Thunderbird-fuelled growth.<\/p>\n

Eventually Italian Swiss Colony was broken up, sold and re-sold, renamed and otherwise reshuffled into oblivion. Now Gallo has taken possession of the Asti Winery, last scrap of the Italian Swiss Colony empire. As the Santa Rosa Press Democrat<\/em> reported<\/a> at the time of the sale: <\/p>\n

\nIn the 1960s, Italian Swiss Colony was even larger than Gallo and both companies pursued the same consumer market, McMillan noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure the symmetry of this historic purchase was not lost on (CEO) Joe Gallo for a second,\u201d McMillan wrote in an email.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

photo courtesy, the Sonoma County Library
\nhttps:\/\/calisphere.org\/item\/ark:\/13030\/c8br8q8h\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gone and almost forgotten is Italian Swiss Colony wine company: Once a giant of American wine, now a footnote for hoochstorians. Its historic birthplace, the Asti Winery in California, was recently devoured in the all-consuming maw of E & J Gallo — bringing the story of ISC’s decline and fall full circle. Italian Swiss Colony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":6798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1860,1858,1128,383,385,1857,1126,1859,174,1861,1169,1374,754,78],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}