Dawn’s Dreams Are Made of This

January 27, 2023 – For anyone wondering what the “Dream” part of Dawn’s Dream Winery refers to, it comes from founder Dawn Galante’s firm belief that dreams are what drive us and give our life purpose. 

Raised by a single mother during her early years outside Detroit, she has a soft spot for helping kids and has built her life around making dreams come true. The woman is living proof that it can be done. 

“I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the years,” she admits. “Dawn’s Dream is still all about making life better for others. This is my heart and emotional base. My winery has a story, like every winery does, but mine is really different.”  

In fact, her tasting room, which is open every day of the year except for two, is dedicated to making kids’ lives better. An entire area called, “Dream a Little Dream,” offers visitors the chance to help the charity Galante has chosen to support that year. For 2023, that charity is Jacob’s Heart. Last year, it was MEarth. She believes that destiny reveals the charity to support, just as it led her to Carmel Valley, far from her humble beginnings. 

Born in Detroit in 1964 to a single mom who was in college, she was originally supposed to be given up for adoption, but her grandmother, the daughter of a strict Baptist minister in Texas, intervened. “She had a dysfunctional marriage, and she could not deal with her daughter being an unwed mother. She marched over to my Dad’s house and asked, ‘When’s the wedding?’” 

Galante admits her father, a GM engineer who specialized in the design of automotive interiors, “is not a great guy.”  The youngest of 7 kids from a Scottish family, his name, Winston Churchill Beaton, invoked an expectation that would, alas, not be met. Although she adored his father, who she describes as 100% Scot and wonderful, and got along famously with his equally affable siblings, she still wonders what troubled him. “We never knew why he was so volatile,” she says. “But, all that turbulence growing up with a single Mom has prepared me to deal with trauma, which is why I have such huge capacity for kids and getting resources for when the family breaks down.” 

When she was 13, her already challenging life would face a whole new level of complexity. Her mother married a man who came with 3 kids of his own, which she says created another set of stuff to deal with. “I joke that I was raised by wolves!!” 

Her new stepdad was a truck driver and a dispatcher and was great with his hands and loved building things like cabinets. Although he was hard working, and hewed to that old Michigan work ethic, he had a lighter side and learned how to dance. “He had a good spirit but so hard working and old school. He insisted that we could not get a car unless we knew how to change the tires!” Galante recalls. 

Always curious and eager to learn, she took classes at several different community colleges in Michigan, always working, as she had since age 14. She worked for a carpet distribution company and then an automotive company, discovering she had a real knack for accounting. For a time she did a lot of forensic accounting for the automotive industry. 

“I did not finish college,” she admits. “I an self taught and had street smarts and experience through different jobs, and was always desperate to learn. It’s interesting that the whole 4-year college track got called into question during the pandemic: this is not what the children of farmworkers really want to do. They want to learn a trade instead.”

 Which is essentially what she did. While working in sales for Armstrong, she was sent to California to work a trade show, where she met a cute guy. 

“California struck me,” admits Galante. “A Lot of Michigan folks dream of moving to Florida. I was always writing stories about far away places, so California felt like destiny. I packed up three boxes and my car, a Ford Mustang, and while I flew to California, a Berkeley professor drove my car. This was the cheapest way to move a car back then! It took him a while to make the trip, but he finally arrived at Jim Close Motors on A Street in Hayward, where I had my first job here.” 

Her mother, who now lives in Florida, was skeptical of her daughter’s decision to move west, and told her she’d be back in Michigan in no time. No chance. Galante married and had 3 daughters, eventually getting divorced, after which she happened to meet Jack Galante, also recently divorced. The two joined forces and families and could not be prouder of their children and their accomplishments.

“My oldest daughter, Nicole is an art history and English major,” says Galante. “She is involved in the art world and she has an amazing job. She’s into poetry and literature and has taught me so much. She gave me a card with this saying on it by Henry David Thoreau: Dreams are the touchstones of our character.”

Which leads to the story of how she chose this year’s charity. When Dawn’s Dream launched, it was all women run. Among them was a woman named Sarah, who had the first office baby, Zane. Years later, although Sarah had left to work in another field, Galante learned that Zane had been diagnosed with acute leukemia. “We jumped in right away and did fundraising for the family,” says Galante. “They were at Stanford 24×7 and she lost her job. We sponsor two families from the Martin Luther King Jr. School Of The Arts in Seaside every year and buy Christmas gifts for them.  I knew Zane was coming home every week, so I asked Sarah if Zane would like to shop for one of the 6-year old kids for Christmas. He was so thrilled to help another child. It brings such joy to all the kids involved!”

Although Galante is involved in supporting many organizations simultaneously, including Rising Worldwide, based in Santa Cruz, she chooses one major organization as a focal point yearly. Her decision to go with Jacob’s Heart came after she asked Sarah who had been most helpful to her, Zane and Zane’s father Sergio. 

Sarah immediately said, Jacob’s Heart. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for children with cancer and their families by providing a full range of support services, including emotional, practical, financial, transportation and peer mentorship.

“These things just unfold the way they are supposed to,” Galante says. “I need to be super-present in my connection to people. I’m so happy to be supporting Jacob’s Heart this year! Dream a Little Dream is now dedicated to Jacob’s Heart. They get 12 cases of wine for fundraising, and they get to use my space to host a guest bartender and they receive a percentage of sales. Every non-profit is so different in how they fundraise and what their mission is. For example, last year our charity partner was MEarth and we took the whole staff to visit and tour, but because they are on the grounds of a school, no alcohol was allowed. So they used my space to fundraise.” 

She says the partnership with MEarth came from a dream she had in which boxes of fresh produce appeared. “MEarth came about because of the Nantucket Project,” says Galante. The Nantucket Project brings like-minded thinkers together yearly to explore ideas that can create a better world, through live talks, short films, and experiences.

Behind the scenes, Dawn’s Dream has a donation table that helps support Rising Worldwide, which helps fight human trafficking by offering women a chance to empower their lives economically by selling goods made by other women. Galante has high praise for the organization that creates a worldwide marketplace for abused and disadvantaged women around the world and teaches them how to run their home-based businesses. She describes it as a “Tupperware business model,” and has a membership with them.

Galante was also an early supporter of Girls Inc. and the Boys and Girls Club, and an avid fundraiser for the Special Olympics Northern California. In 2019, Congressman Jimmy Panetta was the featured guest bartender. Her youngest daughter, Rachel, manages events and donations for Dawn’s Dream.  “Wine is not her passion, but the non-profit aspect is,” says Galante. 

The winery also support mental health initiatives, including AIM for Youth Mental Health, which are very important to Galante, who is currently working on finishing her Life Coach Certificate through an online program that focuses on relationships. She says she is learning at how to be more responsible about giving. “You can get drained: you throw too much money at things. How do you empower someone rather than trying to fix their problem?”

Now spending time with her grandkids and watching her own children thrive, she can take a bit of time to reflect on how far she’s come. “My winery is finally settling into something! I learn so much from my kids. I really wanted all our kids to go to college. I got to live vicariously through the kids and their experiences. I have told them all to ‘Pay it Forward,’ as they have all had such privilege.”

She reflects back on the environment of her early days in Detroit. “I was raised with lots of prejudice. This was the time when they were bussing kids from Detroit into our schools. It was very difficult on everyone. I did not understand the concept of prejudice, but I just knew that I feel badly for anyone or any animal growing up in distress. I acutely feel their pain: I pick up on feelings, because I grew up in a state of hyper-vigilance. I probably would have become a social worker!” 

More and more organizations reach out to her for support and she does love staying local.  “The Carmel Library is reopening now, and they reached out to me to support them. Of course, I said YES!! Libraries are so critical. So is nutrition and education about our food systems. I am going on a deep dive on a nutritional program and learning about the food industry and how it is like tobacco industry.  It has to come to a head.”

Galante has come such a long way and intends on helping others to do the same. “I really believe in myself now. I did not have that mentorship, but I had intense desire and gumption.”

And a dream.