E & J Gallo Winery is a winery and distributor headquartered in Modesto, California. It was founded in 1933 by Ernest Gallo and Julio Gallo, and is the largest exporter of California wines. E & J Gallo Winery is the largest family-owned winery in the United States. History During Prohibition in the United States, Ernest and Julio Gallo grew grapes and sold them to eastern states where home winemaking was allowed. On June 14, 1933, Ernest Gallo filed an application with the Prohibition administration to open a bonded wine storeroom in San Francisco. On June 20, his application was rejected. He was advised that in order to open a storeroom, he had to own a bonded winery. And in order to be bonded as a winery, he had to own vineyards. Ernest and Julio then took steps to bond a winery in the name of their newly formed partnership, E & J Gallo. They had stationery printed that included two designations next to their name: “winery” and “grape growers and shippers.” Their father's estate owned both the grape growing and shipping businesses as well as the vineyards required to establish a winery, at that juncture. Ernest applied on this letterhead to the Board of Alcohol for approval. He wrote that he and Julio were “grape growers with over 400 acres of grapes.” The two brothers started the winery in the fall of 1933, following the repeal of Prohibition. Ernest and Julio were competing against larger, more established, and better financed companies, including more than 800 wine companies established in California in the first few years after the repeal of Prohibition. Their starting capital was less than $6,000 (~$110,000 inflation-adjusted to 2017), with $5,000 of that borrowed by Ernest from his mother-in-law, Teresa Franzia. The brothers learned the craft of commercial winemaking by reading old, pre-Prohibition pamphlets published by the University of California which they retrieved from the basement of the Modesto Public Library. Julio was focused on the production of wine, and Ernest on its sale. They had just one tractor, and would run it permanently on 12/12 hour shifts. On the first year of activity, the brothers had produced 177,000 gallons of wine. In 1957, E & J Gallo launched the fortified cheap white wine Thunderbird. In 1962, E & J Gallo launched the one gallon finger-ringed jug of cheap wine, Red Mountain, later Carlo Rossi Red Mountain, named