One of the co-founders of the Wine Country Marines was the late Bruno Benziger, the patriarch of the Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen who was a proud Marine and a World War II combat veteran of the battles of Guam and Iwo Jima. This page is a loving tribute to his memory.
Bruno Benziger, United States Marine Corps. Photo taken during World War II. (click to enlarge image)
Bruno Benziger, Patriarch of the Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen, CA. Photo taken during the late 1980s (click to enlarge image)
The Bruno Benziger USMC Memorial is located on the grounds of the Benziger Family Winery.
Memorial dedicated to Bruno Benziger located at Benziger Family Winery (click to enlarge image)
Bronze plaque at Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen (click to enlarge image)
During the early formative years of the Wine Country Marine Corps Birthday Ball, Bruno graciously supplied the wine at the event. For seven years, he even printed special USMC commemorative labels (via the Glen-Ellen brand, which was the first wine introduced by the Bezinger Family). As you can see below, five of the Marine Corps Infantry Divisions received a commemorative label. Unfortunately, Bruno died before the 6th Marine Division received a commemorative label.
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1990 Commemorative Label (click to enlarge image)
Today, the Bezinger Family produces the official house wine served at the Marines’ Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco. Each bottle conatins the following special commemorative label featuring Bruno wearing his Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform.
Marines' Memorial House Wine Label (click to enlarge image)
Bruno Benziger's Obituary from the New York Times appears below.
New York Times July 12, 1989 J. Bruno Benziger, 64, Vintner in California
J. Bruno Benziger, co-founder of the Glen Ellen Winery in California, died of heart failure on Monday at his farmhouse in Glen Ellen, the SonomaCounty town for which the winery is named. He was 64 years old.
Until eight years ago Mr. Benziger, a native of the Bronx, was a principal in his family's import-export business, Park, Benziger & Company, based in White Plains.
In 1981, two years after a son, Michael, had gone to California to learn winemaking, Mr. Benzinger sold his interest in Park, Benziger and moved to Glen Ellen to join Michael in building the wine business.
The winery, which produces varietal wines like chardonnay and cabernet to sell at moderate prices, was an instant success. By 1983 Glen Ellen was shipping at a rate of 50,000 cases annually; this year the winery will sell 3.2 million cases for gross revenue of $90 million. All seven of Mr. Benziger's children, five sons and two daughters, are active in managing the winery.
Mr. Benziger, a Marine Corps veteran of World War II, received a bachelor's degree at FordhamUniversity.
He is survived by his wife, the former Helen Williamson; their sons, Michael, Robert, Joseph, Gerard and Christopher; their daughters, H. Patricia Wallace and Kathrine; a brother, Paul, and a sister, Nancy Connellan, both of Bronxville, N.Y., and 10 grandchildren.
The following feature article appeared within the March 1991 issue of "Leatherneck Magazine" :
Winemaker: Bruno Benziger By Ward Winslow
Entering Glen Ellen Winery in Northern California's grape-rich Sonoma Valley you sense a difference from the ordinary winery. Grape rows march neatly; bright flowers edge the road. Trim clapboard buildings form a compound; a gleaming flagpole stands front and center. Everything's squared away-you feel a military presence, as at a famous general's home. Walk down to the tasting room. In an alcove stands a display with the Marine Corps emblem flanked by bottles bearing the patches of the First, Second and Third Marine Divisions and a special Iwo Jima label.
J. Bruno Benziger, creator of this unofficial USMC outpost, has departed. He died of a heart attack at age 64, July 10, 1989, closing a business saga that drew inspiration from his World War II service in the Corps. Although Bruno, as he was widely known, has gone, his spirit lives on in a multimillion-dollar business created in record time and in the beautiful place he built in the California foothills.
Fresh out of high school, Bruno enlisted just before his 18th birthday. He joined the Third Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, on Bougainville, saw action there, then trained for four invasions and took part in two: Guam and Iwo Jima. In the South Pacific, this smart young Browning automatic rifleman-at times a squad leader and acting sergeant-served for 33 months without getting more than a PFC's chevron. He learned his toughduty lessons well and later applied them with great success in business.
He was out of uniform and back in civvies before he turned 21. But, as Monsignor John J. O'Hare said at his funeral, Bruno had "Semper Fidelis" inscribed on his heart, and his loyalty to his family, friends, country and Corps soon became manifest to all who met him. Benziger had to be the best-known former enlisted Marine in the U.S. wine and spirits trade, and his charisma and enthusiasm amplified that renown. His coffin left St. Leo's Church, which was packed with 800 mourners, to strains of "The Marines' Hymn" and was escorted by a Marine honor guard.
Daring was Bruno's gift, but he backed it with thorough preparation and hard physical and mental work. He admitted being lucky, too. Daring and luck mingled when he repeatedly volunteered for hazardous duty and survived landings under fire and battle patrols and again when he sank his retirement money into a run-down vineyard property in 1980, and invented the "fighting varietal"-the wine-marketing coup of a decade. Despite his name's continental ring, Bruno was an all-American type. In an interview shortly before his unexpected death, he said he didn't get his style from his Swiss-German father, who was "very conservative-everything had to be planned. My mother was Irish," he added, "and she had what I liked: the just-do-it type attitude."
After completing high school in midyear, he enlisted at New York City in February 1943-a dire time for U.S. Pacific forces. A viral outbreak had closed Parris Island, S.C., so Benziger and hundreds of other recruits rode to San Diego in Pullman cars. "For the five days I was on the train, I figured the Marine Corps wasn't as tough as I thought it was going to be," Bruno recalled. "Boy, it certainly changed in one hour when we got to San Diego." At boot camp, he volunteered for parachute training, but it was discontinued-doctrine had changed when island fighting in the Pacific turned out to be more frontal war than raids. Next, he went to advanced infantry training at Camp Elliott (at San Diego), a base later given to the Navy when the Marines occupied Camp Pendleton, Calif. Soon, a call came for replacement volunteers. Bruno and a guy named Deegan stepped forward, so everyone with last names "B" through "D" was put in the draft, and Bruno took a ribbing. Trucked to a pier, the replacements formed two lines. A big liner and a little freighter awaited them. Bruno was astounded to find his line boarding the freighter-it looked too small to hold 1,500 troops. They bunked seven high in the holds. "There was no way they could empty the ship in less than a half hour or 45 minutes, and if the ship got hit, forget it," he said.
The Sommelsdyk, speedy though small, reached New Caledonia safely and picked up a destroyer escort. Early one day a siren shrieked, abandon ship (Klaxon) horns blew and there was an explosion. "You were supposed to abandon ship with your dungarees on and your cartridge belt with two canteens. There was sheer panic. Finally we all got up on deck, with guys in every state of undress, some totally nude, some with top on but no bottom, and I don't think out of 1,500 guys there was one who was suited up the way the book said." Someone made Bruno move to cut a raft loose-and just then the order to secure came. It was their first real drill, sprung as a surprise. Once the replacements were assigned, a liner carried Bruno to Bougainville. The Third Marines occupied what he recalled as a swamp-they'd secured a line along Empress Augusta Bay. He joined a rifle company: Company "F," 2d Battalion. "Some guys had tents and others had shelter halves hung in bushes," he said. "They had a forward line with bunkers, and not far back of that, a secure zone. I walked in and they were all playing cards. Here was a new guy. All I remember is I lost $50 before I dropped my pack. I never gambled again." His foxhole "happened" to have water in it. He didn't think much about it until the next morning's air raid when everyone jumped into his foxhole. The sergeant came by and told Bruno, "You gotta get in your foxhole." "But it's all full of water," Bruno responded. "I don't wanta get into that, I'll take my chances with the bomb." It was a one-plane nuisance raid. Soon the Third Marines moved to Guadalcanal, by then secured, and camped at the Coconut Club, a huge grove 20 miles from Henderson Field. They began training to invade Kavieng, on New Ireland, in March 1944. Benziger's advance party was to land a rubber boat on an island in the harbor and test Kavieng's defenses. But after an Army unit took an island up north, it was decided to bypass Kavieng. With that operation off, the Third Division began training to invade Guam. Landings on Saipan and Tinian came first, while Bruno's outfit boarded ships, ready to assault Guam. Then the Japanese fleet was spotted, and the capital ships detailed to bombard the beach gave chase. Meanwhile, the combat-loaded Third Marines went to Eniwetok. "We sat in Eniwetok for a whole 30 days," Bruno said. "That was kind of tough; we were aboard ship for better than 60 days." Finally, on July 21, they invaded Guam. The 2d Battalion landed in the second wave. "We came ashore about an hour and a half later, and they (defenders no longer kept down by naval gunfire) were hitting us in the water, going over the reefs. "I didn't get hit, nor was my boat, but there were boats hit. You could hear bullets fired from a distance ping on the outside of the amtracs." (Amphibian tractors used after the casualty-heavy Tarawa landings;) Landing to one side of Agana, Bruno's outfit fought up a hill and down to the town, bisecting the elongated island in three days. Guam was "secured" by August 7, but patrols continued into December because thousands of Japanese hid in caves or dense jungle. Scarcity was common in the Pacific. On Guam, "we got short of everything," he said. "It was damp and moldy. So the guys on patrol would take the shoes of the guys on guard duty. We'd change shoes every day." Everybody wore dungarees, and there were no replacements, "so once you ripped them or the seams gave way, you had a problem. In my crotch everything was open, so I took rope, like hemp-not string, we couldn't find any string-and stitched to keep the pant legs from coming apart." Food and ammo, except rifle rounds, were scarce, too; scuttlebutt had the Army getting everything. The Marines did have movies. "That was morale," Bruno said. "If you didn't have a movie, you were in battle. I remember one night they were showing movies on a screen stuck in a 55-gallon can filled with rocks. We were all sitting on the ground and, all of a sudden, the world's worst firefight started, tracers going all over. I guess most of the gunfire was ours; we responded to one shot with about 5,000. They shredded the tents. Grenades were being thrown, and everybody was lying down in the movie area. The movie was still on; they never shut the movie off. I was very impressed with that." The Third Division stayed on Guam, though it became crowded, and trained for Iwo Jima. Landings on Iwo began February 19, 1945, but Bruno's platoon didn't go ashore until the 27th-his 20th birthday. On March 16, with dirt blown into his eye, he was sent to a Coast Guard ship for treatment. Soon, he rejoined his division on Guam, where training began for "Olympia 1," the invasion of Japan scheduled for October 1. It never took place-Japan surrendered in August. Bruno had enough points to go home. He headed east by ship in September, going first to Hawaii, and didn't reach New York until December. Did he get a Purple Heart for his eye injury? Bruno laughed and said no one bothered about minor shrapnel and graze wounds. But when the point system for returning Stateside made medals worth five points, some guys besieged, aid stations for records of bandaged wounds. Home in New York, Benziger studied business at Fordham. After graduating, Bruno got lined up for a Marine Reserve commission. He also was getting married. Suddenly the Korean War began and the Fort Schuyler unit he'd have joined after Officer Candidates School went overseas. His bride, Helen, was loath to see him go again, so he stayed a civilian. He joined the family business, a beverage import-export house. In 1959 his father and his father's partner both died within six months, and Bruno and his brother Paul, who'd been seriously wounded as an Army BARman in Korea, took over. They initiated importing scotch in bulk; no one could match their price, and they prospered. Bruno and Helen had seven children: Michael, Robert, Joseph, Gerard, Christopher, Patricia and Katherine. They dreamed of having a family business. Bruno had a 3-acre garden at their White Plains, N.Y., home and considered buying an ornamental nursery upstate. Mike, out in California, got into wine buying and then tried wine-making. Itching to have a winery, he asked his dad to come in-and bring the cash. After a long search, they found the right place. The ranch near tiny Glen Ellen occupied land given by General Mariano Vallejo to the carpenter who built Vallejo's Sonoma home. In 1980 Bruno made an offer to the doctor who owned it. He was back in New York when Mike called to say it'd been accepted. Bruno joined Mike at the ranch in January 1981. First, they planted a vineyard section, aiming just to grow grapes. Soon their aim shifted to having a winery. That summer they invited every football player they knew to help build one, "invasion style-just get the job done no matter what." They wanted to crush grapes starting September 1, so there wasn't much time. They got the winery built in under 45 days. It was a big job-most vintners take years to complete all the concrete pouring and structural work. Bruno's luck held. Local building inspectors struck that year, and the Benzigers plunged ahead, recording the progress in photos and inviting the head inspector out now and then. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which regulates wineries, had a Santa Rosa agent whose first name happened to be Bruno. The two Brunos became friends, and when Benziger said he hadn't time for all the paperwork because he had to build a winery, the BATF's Bruno took pity and handled the red tape himself.
The architect quit, saying Bruno was going too fast. They got along without him. Needing to produce wine quickly, for cash flow, they bottled cabernet sauvignon the doctor had left and fermented white wine in milk-truck tanks-Mike's idea. To their amazement, the white, a sauvignon blanc, won the Sonoma Harvest Fair sweepstakes, and the publicity put them on the map.
Another break involved financing. The doctor and another man were to have shares, but Bruno said that neither "bought the deal." That created a temporary hardship but left the family ownership undivided. Bruno's marketing coup came soon after. California had a glut of unsold wine nicknamed "Winery Lake." Bruno saw that he could produce and sell chardonnay and cabernet (the wine must be at least 75 percent of the named varietal) for less than $5 a bottle. Very competitive with imported French wines, their nomenclature outclassed local vintagedated reds and whites. Thus, he invented the fighting varietal and was able to create quite a large market for it. Meeting its 1990 goal of 50,000 cases in just 18 months, Glen Ellen has mushroomed to an output expected to exceed 3 million cases in 1990. Other vintners produced rival fighting varietals and Winery Lake dried up. But Glen Ellen shifted to buying grapes all over California and kept on gaining. Mike was the winemaker, Joey, the blender; Bruno never claimed winemaking mastery. What he understood was American taste. "In my opinion it's a Coca-Cola taste," he said; people say they like wine dry, but really like it fruity and slightly sweet. Few consumers age wine; most is drunk soon after purchase. Rather than sway with the vagaries of each vintage, the Benzigers blended ready-to-drink wines, keeping the taste consistently the same. Their ranch grapes always have gone into medal-winning premium wines, now called "Benziger of Glen Ellen." But fighting varietals and even less expensive "proprietor's reserve" reds and whites have remained their mainstays. The back labels featured homey tidbits about the family, now including 11 grandchildren. Six of the seven Benziger children have worked for years in the company. Not long before Brunb's passing, Mike became managing partner. The partners still meet at the kitchen table to make their big decisions. Bruno used to joke that he'd applied for the job of ranch foreman. He loved to climb on a bulldozer and do grading, or grab a chain saw and cut trees, or, like a drill instructor, shout instructions to workers across the yard. Even after a pneumonia attack slowed him early in 1989, he was just as apt to go to Texas in the summer to check whether Glen Ellen wines were being displayed as grocers had agreed. After the funeral, Mike said his father "left us pretty well prepared. he left us with his principles, which are concern for the other guy, attention to detail, focus, and guts." Those principles jelled in a teenage Marine fighting a tough war in a crummy theater of action during a period of true privation. You looked out for your buddies; you made sure you knew the battle plan and had your essential equipment in the best shape possible. You concentrated on the task at hand, and you mustered up the guts to do it as quickly and as well as you could. "He could cut. through the bull faster than anyone I ever met," Mike said. He was expert at describing how a task should be done, then telling someone to do it with the full authority of an order. That may explain why he frequently was put in charge of Marine working parties. Did Bruno's style derive from having been in the Marines? "Yeah," he replied, "if you say the style is direct. . . . Any time you were actually in battle, you could have had a bad problem, right? I never had that bad problem, but it did exist. So whatever I did in business, I always said, well, hell, I always had a lot worse time, I could have lost my life. In business you could lose money or prestige or something, but it's not your life." Despite his focus on attaining objectives, Bruno was far from all business. Once when Glen Ellen could have used some publicity, he met an Associated Press editor from San Francisco. Did he plug for a favorable story? Hell no, he wangled an invitation to meet Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who made the famed shot on Mt. Suribachi, on Iwo. Over the years, he lost touch with most of his 3dMarDiv buddies, but became an honorary member of the 1stMarDiv for convention purposes. The Marine Corps-label wine was largely given away-80 percent, Bruno estimated. It remains on sale at the tasting room and must be ordered there in person. Mike Benziger says the firm will continue to bottle and label fresh batches of cabernet and chardonnay as needed. Bruno also supported the Devil Pups organization, which sends about 1,200 kids, ages 13-17, through "boot camp" (without rifles) at Pendleton each year. He outfitted them with T-shirts. Bruno Benziger loved the Marine Corps and served it from the day he enlisted to the day he died. And it served him.
