National guitar champ records song about late vintner
When Gene Guglielmo first heard
”
The Winemaker’s Tale
”
he cried.
”
It’s not hard to make me cry though,
”
said Gene referring to the August day at Emilio Guglielmo Winery
when he first heard the dulcet balled about his father.
National guitar champ records song about late vintner
When Gene Guglielmo first heard “The Winemaker’s Tale” he cried.
“It’s not hard to make me cry though,” said Gene referring to the August day at Emilio Guglielmo Winery when he first heard the dulcet balled about his father.
“The Winemaker’s Tale” appears on National Fingerpick Guitar Champion Pete Huttlinger’s new CD, “The Need,” and chronicles Emilio Guglielmo’s migration from Northern Italy to America and his life in Morgan Hill as a winemaker.
Next Friday Huttlinger and two guest musicians will appear at the Morgan Hill winery for a one night engagement, which will include the first live performance of “The Winemaker’s Tale” and plenty of wine, including a toast with reserve wines from vines planted by Emilio. The event is a fundraiser for an Aspen, Colo., charity both the winery and the musician support.
“We’re going to get a barrel of the not-yet-bottled vintage of Petite Syrah from the 60-year-old vines that Emilio planted,” said Director of Marketing Steve Wilson, standing in the stone courtyard of the 77-year-old family winery. “We’re going to give people a glass of wine out of the barrel, play the song, and in the last part when it says ‘Raise a glass when you think of me and pour another round’ we’re going to raise a glass and drink to him with wine he planted.”
The toast goes to the memory of a man who came to America in 1908, and worked his way across the country, working in the Oklahoma mines, hauling hides for tanneries in San Francisco, and finally finding a place in Morgan Hill where he could live as a winemaker. The song talks about the early days when Emilio and his wife Emilia had about 10 acres of vines, a 200 square foot wine cellar under their bedroom, and a line of customers they delivered to from here to San Francisco.
Through sun and rain the heat and cold
We prayed for the ground to yield.
The miracle of life from the seeds we planted in the field
We picked and we pressed as the seasons passed we filled our barrels high
To the French and the Basque, the Italians too we sold them all our wine
All our wine – all our wine – all our wine.
The genesis of the song came when Huttlinger visited the winery last year and was given a tour, which included a trip into the basement. He saw the trap door under Guglielmo’s bed, which leads to a line of huge oak casks in which Guglielmo made his burgundy wine during prohibition. He heard stories about how the winemaker and his sons would make deliveries to homes and restaurants, filling five-gallon jugs left on porches.
“We were like the milkmen, only we came later,” jokes Gene, who still delivers cases of wine to some of these longtime customers. The song follows Guglielmo through the travails and hypocrisies of prohibition and into old age when he retires and his sons take over the family business.
Now the three Guglielmo sons oversee 100-acres of vines and the production of over 40,000 gallons of wine a year. The winery also hosts parties, weddings, summer music shows, and special events like next week’s concert.
The concert will feature Huttlinger, who played with John Denver during the last years of his life and now plays with Leann Rimes. His guests will include Jim Salestrom, who has performed with such country luminaries as Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris; and multi-instrumentalist John Sommers, who wrote one of John Denver’s biggest hits “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.” Proceeds from the event will go towards “Challenge Aspen,” a non-profit Colorado based organization that creates outdoor recreation possibilities for disabled people. The winery produces a special label sold in Colorado that benefits the organization.
For more information or to buy tickets contact the winery at 408-779-2145.
