In Italian, "Paisano" means friend! This best-selling Carlo Rossi slightly sweet red wine goes great with everything from fish to chicken, but most importantly is best enjoyed among family and lifelong friends. Producer Information Carlo Rossi is a California-based value wine brand established and owned by the beverage giant E. & J. Gallo. It produces a number of red and white table wines all under the broad California designation, and is famous for its jug wines, which are larger than a standard bottle and have become iconic to the brand. The brand is named for Charlie Rossi who was a salesman for E. & J. Gallo and was related by marriage to the Gallo family. Rossi began working for the company in the 1950s and the brand itself began life in 1962 as Red Mountain, an inexpensive line of jug wines. These wines proved popular and when Red Mountain's distribution went national in the 1970s, it was rebranded to Carlo Rossi. The rebrandinf too advantage of both Rossi's Italian heritage and his personality - Charlie appeared in commercials promoting the wines as approachable and easy to drink. The brand became immensely popular in the United States and at one point was one of the best-selling wine labels in the country. Carlo Rossi is notorious for naming its wines after several famous European wine appellations such as Burgundy, Chablis and Chianti. Despite the names, these wines don't come from their respective wine-making regions in France or Italy, don't follow any of the vineyard or winemaking practices (or permitted grape varieties) and are not vintage-dated. This has caused some controversy in the past but Rossi is able to retain the names as trademarks of the brand, in part due to the number of years it has been operating. The wines are usually blends of various grape varieties that are popular in California, including Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. Much of the fruit used in Carlo Rossi wines today is sourced from California's Central Coast.
