Robert Mondavi

But to your point about like that off the beaten track, you wouldn't know it was their thing.

If you come out and you get on Highway 21 in Napa, you could go and you'd be like, whoa, Robert Mondavi, you know, go in there.

Oh, Catherine Hall.

And all of these places are fabulous places, like zero, zero shade to go there.

I'm going to start with the latter of the, because one of the episodes in the Swirled Cup is what I call the Mount Cromore, or, you know, a little takeoff of Mount Rushmore of American wine, because I mentioned Andrei Chelichev.

I believe that in addition to him, Robert Mondavi, those are two of the faces on my Mount Crushmore, and I can send you that graphic.

It's pretty funny.

But they were creating a culture that was rooted in pursuit of quality, belief that in the possibility and the potential of it, and collaboration.

Andre would have monthly lunches, technical lunches at the place that's now Charlie's and was Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, bringing everybody together to diagnose their problems in the wine, but also to talk about techniques and things that they should be doing and trying and not doing and getting away from.

Robert Mondavi, along with people like Lee Stewart and the many, many people that they both kind of co-mentored, it was a back and forth thing, but then the ones that they mentored in the next generation were all really working together and taking a mindset that maybe wasn't as typical for Europe.

And I've interviewed people like Veronique Drouin and I've interviewed Piero Antinori, and they talk about the collaborative spirit, the sharing of an open door policy of the American wine industry as being a model that they came to follow because they realized, as Robert Mondavi placed it, and Danny Meyer says this in the show as well, he's the founder, of course, of Union Square Cafe and Union Square Cafe.

hospitality group, that the rising tide lifts all ships, or as I say it, you're only as good as your weakest link.

The guys wore their tuxes.

Robert Mondavi would speak.

And that's what wine was founded as in America, as this experience and this idea.

And, you know, you can learn as much as you want to learn.

And they came through the Rust Belt when they came through Ellis Island.

When I say they, he and his childhood friend Cesare Mondavi came over together.

That guy.

In 1914.

And these these words popped off the page.

And the stories we heard as growing up, because I wasn't in the wine business, didn't quite resonate, but I went to my grandparents and I said, were those stories true? And they validated those stories and how their family came to our cabin in Rio Nido and near Guerneville and our family went out to their farm in Lodi and maintained their friendships into their 90s, Nazareno and Cesare.

But I wrote Bob Mondavi a letter Here I am at Clos du Bois in 1998, I think.

And I said, listen, I know you're a busy guy.

So, I needed to go somewhere else.

So, where does he go? But Robert Mondavi, who has two sons and a daughter.

But Robert really, really wanted my dad to come work for him.

He was impressed with what he had done at, at Boullieu Vineyards.

He knew that André was especially known for his red wines.

His private reserve, Delatour Cabernet, George Delatour Cabernet, Robert had more experience with white wines.

And so, when my dad came to Robert Mondavi, he brought that knowledge with him.

And in fact, he was the one that made the wine that put Robert Mondavi on the map.

[gentle music] So there's a moment in the Mondavi family story that always gets me.

It's 2004, and the board of the Robert Mondavi Corporation, a company that basically put Napa Valley on the global map, votes to fire Michael Mondavi, the founder's oldest son, and the man who'd run the company for decades.

His brother, Tim, the wine-making genius, is still there.

But the board decides Michael has to go, and it sets off a chain reaction that ends with the family selling the whole thing to a giant beverage conglomerate for over a billion dollars.

Exactly.

And now back to the wine.

So Robert Mondavi was a pioneer.

In the 1960s, he left the family's original winery, Charles Krug, after a brutal fight with his brother, Peter.

My wife and I and some friends had gone to visit wine country.

No clue about wine, but one of her classmate's mom, Geneviève, was the head of wine for Opus One, Robert Mondavi, and so she was gracious enough to bring us in to the barrel room to taste through stuff and have this amazing experience.

We drank through old reserves, but that 2003 ignited something in my brain 'cause I still remember it to this day.

After that, we went to a picnic across the street, and that winery, the wine was terrible, and I could realize at that point, it's like, this is good wine, bad wine.

Oh.

It was the, uh, Golden Vine Winery, hosted by Robert Mondavi.

And we'll get into that.

Uh, way back when, this used to be a little something called the Wine Country Market underneath the Golden Vine Winery.

Thank you for concur- confirming, yes, yeah.

Um, so Wine Country Trattoria itself opened in December of 2001.

Uh, the Robert Mondavi family presented the winery at the opening, um, and then Disney took over, um, shortly after.

The Mondavis left in October, um, and the Trattoria opened in December, meaning the Mondavis basically said, "This is what the winery's gonna be," or what the, the Trattoria's gonna be, and they got everything moving, and then they were like, "Actually, we're leaving." [laughs] So-