I am old enough to remember a time when California wine was considered suspect. Most of it was delivered in a one-gallon jug, and the handful of wineries that aimed for something more profound rarely turned up east of the Mississippi.
This was a period when the French dominated the wine culture of America. Even the most humble Beaujolais-Villages was thought to be superior to anything California might produce.
Robert Mondavi, who opened the winery bearing his name in 1966, changed all that. He made the iconic image of his Oakville winery, built to resemble a 19th century California mission, a beacon for wine lovers the world over. First there was Robert Mondavi. Then the Napa Valley. And, finally, California wine. He lifted them all by his bootstraps, and put them on the map with the sheer strength of his personality and will to succeed.
Mondavi passed last week at the age of 94. The entire California wine industry mourns. For in his lifetime Mondavi led the charge to gain acceptance for California wine at the finest dining establishments in the land.
He traveled tirelessly, making friends and winning converts wherever he went. He reached across the Atlantic and formed cooperative ventures with Baron Philippe Rothschild (Opus One) and the legendary Frescobaldi family of Tuscany (Luce). He even joined hands with Julia Child and co-founded the American Institute of Wine and Food, promoting the then-novel concept that a bottle of wine belonged at the dinner table in every American home.
Robert Mondavi was the greatest ambassador American wine has ever known. He lived to see the day when California wines would be the choice of everyday wine consumers by a 3-to-1 margin (California wine accounts for 75 percent of all wine drunk in the United States). He lived to see the day when California wines would dominate the shelf space in nearly every important wine shop in the land, a day when French wines would even fall behind Italy and Australia in many of the most fashionable wine emporiums.
He was one of a kind. The list of his accomplishments is far too long to recite in this space. Robert Mondavi, RIP.
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