The Origin Story of the Gemello Winery Book

The events that inspired me to be compelled to share Mario’s legacy and Kay’s secrets to longevity.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson, author of 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 a memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Book summary) 🍇 This is my newsletter. It includes book research and early release chapters about winemaker Mario Gemello and his centenarian widow, Kay Gemello. 📖 They are my lovable maternal grandparents. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button.

1989: Sharing a special moment on Maui with Grandpa Mario

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The Origin Story of Mario, Kay and the Gemello Winery Book

The origin of writing a book about the Gemello Winery and my grandfather goes back to 2002. I was working as a journalist in Las Vegas. On New Year’s Day morning, I was on the phone with my mom in the Bay Area. She had just informed me that Grandpa Mario’s prostrate cancer had recurred after a decade of being in remission. And the prognosis was guarded. 

“We don’t know how much time he has left,” my mom said.

I was devastated.

In a flash, three childhood memories washed over me. The first was when I was about five. I was crouched down in his barrel room and he was letting me sip from a wine barrel’s spigot. My first taste of wine. Excited to do such a grown up thing. He knew I was expecting to taste the sweetness of grape juice. He’d laugh when my nose wrinkled when the sourness hit my lips. The second memory was when I wanted to help him in his garage. He’d questioned if I was well-equipped to do so. “Do you have your left-handed hammer?” The third was a solemn day. I was nine. Standing in a suit at my great grandfather’s funeral.

I hung up the call with my mom feeling completely numb.

The night before, I had rung in the New Year on the Strip, because that’s what you do in your twenties living in Las Vegas. I was with my buddy Greg, a fellow journalist, but somehow lost track of him shortly after midnight. 

My phone rang again and it was him.

“What happened to you last night?” Greg asked.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out. Tears started streaming down my face. He could hear that I was sobbing.

Soon after, I decided to move back to the Bay Area, so that I could be close to my grandfather for however long he had left. It would turn out, he’d have three years.

To help cope with this news, I re-read Tuesday’s With Morrie, Mitch Albom’s classic memoir about his beloved professor, Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of Lou Gerhig’s disease. Albom extracted as much wisdom as he could from him on these Tuesday meetings before his passing.

I decided to do something similar, meeting with my grandfather on Sundays. He was excited about the book project, but like Morrie, he was less interested in talking about himself.

Morrie’s magnetic element to his students was asking about them. In a recent talk Albom gave, he shared Tuesdays With Morrie’s origin story. One day when visiting, he would watch visitors come in to see Morrie, and walk out weeping. 

Albom told him, “I don’t get it. You’re the one dying. How come you’re always asking about them, instead of talking about your problems? And Morrie said, because taking makes me feel like I’m dying. Giving makes me feel like I’m living.”

Albom told him, “I don’t get it. You’re the one dying. How come you’re always asking about them, instead of talking about your problems? And Morrie said, because taking makes me feel like I’m dying. Giving makes me feel like I’m living.”

Grandpa Mario was similar, but he also wanted to talk about what inspired him - his father. He wanted us to transcribe a series of old cassette tapes made in the 1970’s containing stories his father had told about his emigration from Italy in 1912, struggles during Prohibition, and the early days of launching the winery during the Great Depression.

After Grandpa Mario passed away in 2005, life got in the way, and the book project got shelved for more than a while. Circumstances during the pandemic breathed life back into it. 

Grandma Kay was approaching her 100th birthday and a family priority during the pre-vaccine lockdown era was shrinking her bubble. This led to us laying off her caregivers temporarily. I took on a series of shifts per week to keep Grandma Kay company. Meanwhile, I’d sift through old newspaper clippings of the winery and ask her questions to close any gaps in my knowledge and research.

While chatting with her one day, something dawned on me that’s often a writer’s worst nightmare: I may be missing a bigger story. And she’s sitting across from me.

Grandma Kay had been married 64 years to my grandfather. By now, she was 15 years into widowhood, shattering the myth of the “Broken Heart Syndrome.” When people meet her, they often ask the same question: what’s your longevity secret?

When I told her, I was thinking about shifting the book’s focus or at least incorporating more about her longevity, she was surprised.

“Me? I don’t do anything unusual,” she said.

Researchers at the New England Centenarian Study are just as curious. She was recruited to join the study in 2021. She got on their radar after her local newspaper wrote about her birthday plans to kick off a San Francisco Giants game with her throwing out the Centennial First Pitch.

If you are curious how that went, you can watch her Centennial First Pitch video here.

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