J Gallo Winery

E&J Gallo Winery sued to block a customer, Hilton Hotels Corp., from opening a chain of Italian restaurants named Gallo Rosso. Gallo, which means rooster in Italian, said it began using the name in 1933 when Ernest and Julio Gallo founded the company. The family has spent more than $600 million promoting the name, selling billions of bottles of wine.

Angered by "vicious" magazine comments about family members of the Gallo wine dynasty, the world's largest winery announced today it has yanked $650,000 in ads from Time Inc. publications. The comments which reportedly angered Ernest and Julio Gallo were contained in a generally favorable article that appears in the Sept. 1 issue of Fortune magazine.

Constellation Brands Inc., the world's biggest wine company, said Thursday that its fiscal second-quarter profit edged up 2.3%, lifted by higher sales of wine and its December acquisition of Robert Mondavi Corp. Net income grew to $79.97 million, or 34 cents a share, after preferred dividend payments in the three months ended Aug. 31, compared with $78.16 million, or 35 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, earnings were $98.1 million, or 41 cents a share.

Democratic state senators gathered in La Jolla over the weekend to enjoy rounds of golf and high-priced meals and lodging at an annual fundraiser paid for largely by an association of cable television companies seeking favorable treatment on legislation. The 2013 Pro Tem Cup hosted by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg at Torrey Pines Golf Course is a major fundraiser for the state Democratic Party. The event's lead sponsor each year is the California Cable and Telecommunications Assn., which last year reported contributing $100,000 to the party around the time of the fundraiser.

Winery owner Julio Gallo's wife is under investigation in the accidental death of a young mother who was killed when the Gallos' car allegedly veered into oncoming traffic on a treacherous highway south of here, a California Highway Patrol official said. Julio Gallo, 79, co-founder of the $1-billion-a-year E & J Gallo Winery, and his wife, Aileen, 76, were reported in stable condition at San Jose Medical Center on Wednesday.

Farmhands at Gallo of Sonoma cast votes Thursday on whether to oust the United Farm Workers of America from the vintner's fields, less than three years after the union won a hard-fought and much-publicized contract there. The fieldworkers gathered at ranches across Sonoma County in Northern California shortly after daybreak to weigh in on the petition to break ties with the UFW, filed with the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board last week by workers.

Julio Gallo, who with his brother Ernest revolutionized and popularized wine in the United States, was remembered Friday for his love of the land and the grapes it grows. Hundreds of mourners, many of them employees of E&J Gallo Winery, filed past his casket to pay last respects to Gallo, 83, who was killed when his Jeep overturned Sunday. There are to be no eulogies at Gallo's funeral Mass on Saturday.

Responding to an effort by the county Board of Supervisors to reduce alcohol-related social problems on Los Angeles' Skid Row, a second wine maker has voluntarily suspended sales of its cheap, high-alcohol wine in the downtown neighborhood. But Canandaigua Wine Co. of New York, which produces Wild Irish Rose and Cisco brands, did not go as far as E & J Gallo Winery, which last week halted sales of its Thunderbird and Night Train brands in Skid Row areas throughout the country.

LOS ANGELES-BASED Chiat/Day Inc. has long been considered one of California's more creative advertising agencies. Two of its commercials for Apple Computer have become textbook studies illustrating how advertising can approach dramatic art. But last year the agency was facing a new challenge in the intensely competitive wine-cooler market ("A Sizzling New Sell," May, 1986).

Joseph Gallo, younger brother of wine makers Ernest and Julio Gallo, claimed Thursday that his brothers have for years concealed from him his inherited right to a one-third share in what has become the world's largest wine-making operation, which is based in Modesto. "Joe has what appears to be a valid claim to an undivided one-third ownership of the winery as well as his family's trade name Gallo, " Joseph Gallo's attorney, Jess S.