Where It All Began

Small details in legacy stories that lead to giant Ah-ha! moments.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson and welcome to 🍷 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.

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March 16th: Tavern Talks on Montebello Road

My next speaking engagement later this month will be held at a location with incredible significance to my book’s origin. I will be speaking about “Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,” at the Vidovich Vineyards tasting room, 18101 Montebello Rd., Cupertino. It’s located at the top of the ridge, 2,000 feet above the foothills of Stevens Creek Canyon.

I’ll be sharing the Gemello Winery story at 1:30 pm, Saturday, March 16th, an event hosted by the Cupertino Historical Society. (Reserve Your Ticket Here!)

Barry Timmins, winemaker and general manager at Vidovich Vineywards

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The Gemello Winery emerged from the repeal of Prohibition in January 1934 and became a significant part of the Mountain View community for more than 50 years. But my grandfather, Mario Gemello and his story originated on a rainy day in Cupertino, in the Montebello wine district.

His father, John Gemello, immigrated to the Santa Clara Valley in 1912 with his Italian winemaking skills. After struggling to make ends meet in the Piedmont region of Italy, he left his wife, Teresa, and daughter Margurite behind, telling them he would send for them when he became settled and had the money.

He landed a job at the Almaden Vineyards in San Jose. After hours, he would occasionally play cards at the Costa Hotel, a popular local watering hole for Italian immigrants. One day, he ran into Giovanni Beltramo, whose family he knew from Piedmont. Empathetic to Gemello’s solo journey in a new land, Beltramo offered to loan my great grandfather the money to send for his family¹. He accepted.

For the next two years, Great Grandma Teresa was busy selling her Piedmont property and most of her possessions. She also put her father in a home before making her way with her daughter to California by 1915.

By then, John Gemello had left Almaden Vineyards for a job at the Picchetti Winery on Montebello Road. As a bonus, he was able to rent a house from the Picchetti family². A generation before, the Picchetti brothers, Vincenzo, and Secondo, were among the earliest settlers on the ridge in 1872. They are credited with naming it Monte Bello, Italian for beautiful mountain. By the turn of the 20th century, it had become a well established wine district.

Kevin will be sharing the Gemello Winery story at 1:30 pm, Saturday, March 16th, at Vidovich Vineyards, 18101 Montebello Rd., Cupertino.

Where my grandfather, Mario, comes into this story is quite fascinating and a lesson in paying attention to small details of family stories.

Part of this history comes from my great grandfather, John Gemello, himself. He retold this tale on an old cassette tape, recorded in the 1970s, a few years before his death at 98.

My grandfather, Mario and I were transcribing the tape one day in 2002. Our process involved listening to segments together, then stopping the tape, allowing for Grandpa Mario to translate to me what his father was saying in his heavy Italian accent. Meanwhile, I’d type relevant or useful notes into my computer.

At one break, Grandpa Mario described why the house next to the Picchetti Winery was available.

“The guy who was supposed to move into the house was allergic to poison oak, and it was all over the place; therefore, he decided against moving in. So the landlord offered the house to my dad, and they moved in - New Year’s Eve, 1915.”

Grandpa Mario then told me, “I don’t think you need to put all that. You could just say they moved in on New Year’s Eve, 1915.”

After a pause, Grandpa Mario added, “he also said that it rained for four consecutive days after they moved in. But you don’t have to put that either.”

I agreed and we moved on. But soon, I felt an itch in my brain caused by abandoning those details. Then it hit me.

“Hey Gramps, you might think the weather was not that significant when they moved to Montebello, but think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“They moved there on New Year’s Eve, 1915. It rained for four days. Eight months and  27 days later, you were born.”

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1. Beltramo had a vineyard and wine store in Atherton, Calif., around the turn the 20th Century. The store later got moved to Menlo Park and was renamed Beltramo’s Wines and Spirits. It was run by multiple generations of Beltramo family members for 134 years. It eventually closed in 2016. Giovanni’s great granddaughter and store GM, Diana Hewitt, noted about the closure to the press that year that her uncle was 82 and her dad was 79. “They deserve to go fishing.”

2. John Gemello worked for Antone and John Picchetti, the sons of Vincenzo Picchetti.