Robert Mondavi, the man who really helped turn Napa Valley and California wines into some of the best wines in the world, beating top French wines, has died.
The death of Robert Mondavi on May 16, 2008, at the age of 94, saddened me. It wasn't that I knew him, but I have enjoyed many of his fine California wines, and he was a figurehead and a pioneer in improving American wines. He was also a very real person, a friendly-sounding name at a time when it seemed you had to be a Baron in France in order to make good wine.
When I first drank American wine in England, there was only one choice. It was Paul Masson wine, red or white, and it owed its popularity as much to the fact that it came (as it still does) in unusual large bottles with metal caps that you prised off. Afterwards the wine bottles made good flower vases, or you could put kitchen utensils in them. It's amazing to think back, not so very far, to a time when that was the only non-European wine you would find in most stores. It was a time when Monty Python made sketches about Australian wines – the very notion of a decent Australian wine made us laugh.
It was also about the time when Robert Mondavi was opening his first Napa Valley vineyard, in 1966, independently from his family firm. By 1976 Napa Valley wines, including Robert Mondavi's, were beating the most expensive French wines at the infamous blind tasting in Paris.
Yes, California wines have come a long way in a short time, and the death of Robert Mondavi – the man who invented Fumé Blanc, among so many other achievements – should make us all sad. But happy too for a long and full life.
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Here's a link to a piece I did for Suite101 about visiting Napa Valley vineyards, including Robert Mondavi's.
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