The History of Jug Wines
Jug wine” is a term in the United States for inexpensive tablewine (or “bulk wine“) typically bottled in a glass jug. … Beginning in the 1960s, when Americans began to consume more premiumwine, jug wine took on a reputation for being “extreme value” (bargain-priced premium wine).
The King of the Jug Wines is Charlie “Carlo” Rossi, who, though he died in 1994, still reigns over the category today. He peddled a pretty good, mostly honest wine for E & J Gallo Winery until his death at age 90. I say “mostly” honest, because he had less to do with making the wine that bears his name than either he or the Gallo company let on.
But before we can even get into the modern day of Jug wines, we need to take a look at history.
The first thing everyone needs to know about transporting wines is
- Air must be kept out of the vessel to prevent oxidation.
- The vessel must be strong enough not to easily break, without being so heavy that it cannot be easily moved (especially when hand labor was the rule).
- In many cases, the vessel needs to be opened and then resealed.
- The vessel itself shouldn’t interact with the wine (though we’ll see that a very large asterisk follows this rule).
UInlike the rest of the storage devices we’ll talk about, kvevris (also translated as qvevri) were probably not used for transporting wine. Some historians speculate that they were, but it’s not very likely. Why isn’t it likely? They were quite large and they were buried
in the ground to ensure climate control sans electricity. While it’s hard to pin specific dates when archeologists take us this far back in history, we can say with certainty that the Ancient Georgians were using these large, beeswax coated, earthenware vessels as early as 6,000 BC.
So what makes a kvevri so special? Aside from being the oldest storage vessels we’ve discovered to date, they were used in every stage of wine production, from grape crushing to aging. Unfermented grapes, naturally growing in the region, were dumped into a kvevri
Then came the Amphorae
Amphorae were the ancient world’s standardized way to transport wine, olive oil and other prized liquids. Amphorae came in many sizes, similar to both the bulk transport formats we use today as well as the world’s common wine bottle sizes. These wax-lined (pine and bees wax were common) ceramic containers, invented by the Egyptians, were gradually adopted by nearly all the wine drinking/producing civilizations throughout the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions. They reached their peak in usage and standardization in ancient Greece and Rome. They were easy to produce and, importantly, easy to transport. Their shape –
round with a tapered bottom, two handles and a long, slim neck – served four purposes:
- The long slim neck reduced the surface area of wine that would be exposed to oxygen.
- The tapered bottom allowed sediment to collect and the amphora itself to be easily buried when cooler, long-term storage was called for.
- They fit well in the ships of the day.
- The handles eased the load of carrying them.
Although the vast majority of wine was stored and transported in barrels well into the twentieth century, in the seventeenth century we see the introduction of the glass bottle and the cork stopper. Advances in glass making allowed for the production of thicker, harder to break glass, and eventually a point was reached where it was safe to store and transport wine in a glass bottle. Early wine bottles had fat bottoms and short necks. Over time the neck grew and length, and the bottom slimmed – and by the 1820s we see shapes that resemble modern wine bottles.In 1821, a company called Rickets of Bristol received a patent for a machine that manufactured identically sized bottles, in a shape we would recognize. While bottles are stylistically varied today, standard bottles hold 750ml of wine. Slightly larger and smaller bottles exist, following regional traditions, but their usage has become increasingly rare. Of course larger format bottles such as Magnums exist as well
Today, the first really jug glass wine came about in the early 1950’s It was made by Gallo and it contained Hearty Burgundy
From the California wine industry’s early beginnings in the 19th century, wines were primarily bulk, sold generically by the barrel to Northern California and East Coast retailers, where they were often bottled and labeled with euphemistic names like Chianti and Chablis. Immigrants thirsty for a taste of the old country flocked to their local wineries to fill up gallon jugs for their tables, which is how the name evolved. After Prohibition, more efficient farming methods allowed growers to make bulk wine on an even bigger scale, especially in the Central Valley. But as varietal, cork-finished bottles gained in popularity in the 1960s and beyond, the term “jug wine” soon became synonymous with a mass-produced, inferior product.
Early commercial winemaking in Northern California is largely a story of Italian immigrants. During the first waves of immigration in the second half of the 19th century, Italians tended to make wine wherever they landed, simply because they needed to make it in order to drink it. While some were drawn to California for the Gold Rush and turned to commercial winemaking when they didn’t strike it rich, a later group came in the 1880s and afterward for the express purpose of working in California’s burgeoning wine industry.
One popular destination was the Italian Swiss Colony, a long-gone vineyard and winery near Cloverdale established in the 1880s. The facility offered immigrants jobs working the field and in the wine production, room and board and even part ownership. Workers eventually saved up enough to bring families over and buy land of their own.
Giovanni Foppiano arrived in Healdsburg from Genoa in 1855 and grew vegetables and fruit before purchasing an existing winery in 1896. He produced bulk wine, using generic names evocative of the Old Country, such as Burgundy, Claret and Chablis, a common practice at the time. The wine was actually a blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Carignane, with some Mission grapes thrown in. It was sent by the barrel to Northern California grocery stores or by train farther afield.
There is still a market for those jug wines. Most wine retail shops will carry an assortment of Jug wines. However, recent times have seen the number of different types decreasing. The start of
boxed wines to me, was also the start of the decline of the infamous jug wines.
But, I do believe there will always be place for jug wines in the United States.
