Excerpt From House of Mondavi

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PROLOGUE

Blaze, June 5, 2004

Robert Mondavi glided through the oak-studded grounds of the Meadowood country club in an electric golf cart. The ninety-year-old vintner’s craggy profile looked as if it belonged on a Roman coin, but his dashing Western wear — a red-and-white-checked shirt, drawstring tie, black broad-brimmed bolero hat, and leather vest — prompted a few double-takes from the khaki-clad volunteers setting up for that day’s wine auction. The aging emperor of Napa Valley also wore a faint frown.

Four decades earlier, Robert Mondavi had become famous for praising the benefits of fine wine to a nation that preferred Coca-Cola and cocktails. He had tirelessly sermonized that food and wine were at the heart of the good life, that in an age of fast food, wine was a healthy and civilizing force with sacred traditions, and that Napa Valley wines belonged in the company of the world’s best. Along the way, this son of an Italian peasant became the patriarch of America’s fine wine trade.

His passion had paid off: In time, Napa Valley wines took their place alongside those from Bordeaux as the world’s finest, and a new wine-and-food culture leapfrogged from America’s coastal cities to the heartland. Along the way, he and his children had become fabulously wealthy by selling stock in the family business to the public.

But that was long ago. Now, his company’s reputation for producing high-quality wines had eroded and the House of Mondavi itself was rent by conflict. In the 1960s, a family feud had erupted, leading to a sensational court battle that created a decades-long split between the brilliant pitchman, Robert, and his introverted younger brother, Peter. These tensions were threatening to end Robert’s dream of creating his own American wine dynasty in the image of Europe’s Antinori and Rothschild families. On the eve of the wine trade’s most glamorous annual event, Robert’s family was on the brink of losing control of the company.

The auction tent hummed with Schadenfreude as the Mondavis’ rivals and acquaintances experienced a delicious thrill in witnessing the troubles of the valley’s most prominent family. Two days earlier, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal had revealed the Mondavis’ personal and business turmoil, after the Robert Mondavi Corporation’s board had ousted Robert’s eldest son, Michael, as chairman and put him on an indefinite leave of absence from the company. The move, which neither his father nor his siblings had opposed, had publicly humiliated the volatile Michael and left the company in the hands of nonfamily members for the first time in its history.

But Robert had a more troubling secret. Only his immediate family and a handful of his closest advisors knew that it was the patriarch’s own financial overreaching, as well as his determination that his offspring would head the company, that had undercut the family’s control of the Robert Mondavi Corporation. Whether it was hubris or simple financial miscalculation, Robert’s philanthropic commitments had led him and his children into a crushing struggle with the company’s board of directors. The nonagenarian’s own financial situation had begun to look precarious.

Robert still commanded a large measure of loyalty and respect, which the Mondavis hoped would be reflected during the sale of Lot 11, their offering. It was a showcase for the family’s craft and a treasure trove of its most sacred winemaking achievements, far removed from the mass-market Mondavi brands sold at Costco and Safeway. The lot contained nine bottles of Mondavi’s finest Oakville Reserve Cabernets, made from coddled grapes aged for three years in French oak barrels. Robert’s granddaughter Chiara had hand-painted and then etched the golden silhouettes of grapevines on each bottle.

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