Robert Mondavi

They do a mean omelet at breakfast.

Yeah, they do unlimited pours on the Robert Mondavi collection.

Exactly.

And meanwhile, she's like, I'd rather stuff two and a half outfits into my REI backpack and ride the night train from Delhi to a diaper without my Amex card.

And then he went on to become the wine king of California at Fountain Grove, a winery in Santa Rosa.

And he was called the Robert Mondavi of his time.

How did you discover his story and what has since happened to his winery?

I first came across that I think the first time I read it was in the book Japanese Drinks.

1965, I guess, is when St. James opened up the first new winery.

But I said, well, what's the first winery in Napa Valley built after Prohibition? What do you think? It was Robert Mondavi in 1966 was the first winery built post-Prohibition, and he left the family business, which was the Charles Krug wine, which had been around since before Prohibition.

So California didn't have the Renaissance any greater than what we had here.

We don't think about the Prohibition story, or I don't think about the Prohibition story as strongly in California and the rest of the United States as it's told in the history of Missouri.

Because, you know, the history of Napa was always lots of different varieties.

And Robert Mondavi started a whole winery around Italian varieties in the 90s, La Familia.

It wasn't the right time and place market wise.

And so there was a, the feeling was forgettable.

I had to just stand on it.

You know, I've never been to Robert Mondavi's winery.

I'd never been to the Mondavi winery, and it just opened up from a renovation.

I just drove to the Mondavi winery and just kind of stood there for a second underneath the arch trying to understand the history of this place, how it

I was at Maya Kamas on Monday, and I was almost 2,000 feet above sea level.

And that winery began in the 19th century.

And then I'm down on the valley, standing underneath the arch of Robert Mondavi's winery, and I'm understanding the history here of the 1960s, a little bit before that.

It's incredible.

Um, and then we have also some strong stags leap.

Um, so the Wapohill vineyard, which, uh, was a vineyard plants that I want to, I think it was primed by Robert Mondavi.

I'm not sure prior to, um, Mr. Mondavi, what was there, but, um, you know, there's lots of cab there, but, um, a couple of blocks that, uh, we've planted for the prisoner.

Um, one of which is Sarah.

And I was like, okay, drove, literally drove to California, started knocking on doors and I got a job.

At Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, you know, and just learn how to learn from the ground up, you know, started cleaning floors, you know, work my way up.

And then I remember I'd been there for a couple of years and felt like I'd learned so much.

It was just I was hooked at that point.

There is the reason he came because Italians were treated terribly in Minnesota.

There was like there's so much more to the Robert Mondavi story than just what we all know.

And I feel like that needed to be told because American wine, I believe that we're in the best time in American history to drink American wine because the knowledge that everybody did all the work and we're here.

You guys are here like enjoying.

They just know it.

It's like Robert Mondavi back in the day.

They know the name.

And honestly, I don't think that's good for wine.

And, um, and, uh, I did three years, and then I had the opportunity to go back to Yalumba and, and do the same for them, not realizing that, um, Hill Smith had a plan to, um, kind of...

He'd, he'd read a, an, um, an article by Robert Mondavi about how family-owned wineries could compete and hold their own in the wine world as it kind of merged and-

Yeah

... and agglomerated, and, uh, not realizing that, um, that opportunity was gonna come my way.