Initially producing wine-based coolers, Bartles & Jaymes switched to solely malt-based coolers in 1991, when the federal excise tax on wine was raised. In 2019 Gallo resumed making wine-based coolers, although the product line remains mostly malt-based.[2]
TV commercials
The product line is remembered for its folksy television commercials, created by Hal Riney, which ran from 1984 to 1991. Two older gentlemen characters, Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes, sat on a front porch and related their new discoveries or projects on which they were working. The characters were patterned after the winery's founders, Ernest and Julio Gallo. Occasionally ads would be a twist on the idea of senior citizens or folksiness, such as having the pair fly an old-fashioned biplane over a beach, then airdrop crates of their product which were received by grateful young party animals. Bartles did all the talking, and ended each commercial with the tagline, "... and thank you for your support."[3]
David Rufkahr played Frank Bartles and Dick Maugg played Ed Jaymes. Prior to their work on the ads, neither Rufkahr nor Maugg had been an actor: Rufkahr, a career Air Force veteran and cattle rancher from Redmond, Oregon, won the job in a talent search, whereas Dick Maugg was a general contractor from Santa Rosa, California.
David Rufkahr died of a heart attack in April 1996, in Bend, Oregon, at the age of 61. Dick Maugg died of cancer in Santa Rosa on July 28, 2015; he was 83. His death was reported to news outlets by his family on October 27, 2015.[4]
