Three months after the death of "legend", "colossus" and "father of Napa" Robert Mondavi seems a good time for an impartial sift through the eulogies. What did he actually change and is the world of wine a better place for his influence?The received wisdom is that Mondavi opened the world's eyes to non-European wine by playing an instrumental role in California's emergence as the first serious New World wine region.
The grandson of Italian farmers, Mondavi was the driving presence behind the Robert Mondavi Corporation until well into his 90s (to the frustration of his sons, who left their positions as vice-chairman and winemaker partly due to the overbearing presence of the old man).
The historic 1976 "Judgement of Paris" consisted of a blind tasting in Paris of French and Californian wines by nine French judges, in which the majority of the top prizes went to Californian wines. None of Mondavi's wines won their categories but those of two of his disciples did. Californian wine was on the map.
Mondavi's first landmark achievement was the development in 1978 of Opus One, still in production today, with Baron Philippe de Rothschild. The Robert Mondavi Corporation's initial public offering in 1993 was a disaster and was costly both financially and to Mondavi's credibility. Joint ventures with Errazuriz in Chile and Rosemount in Australia as well as a longtime presence in Italy raised Mondavi's profile. Constellation Brands' acquisition of the Robert Mondavi Corporation in 2004 secured Constellation's place as the biggest wine company in the world (ahead of California's Gallo) but caused further family frictions and was seen by Mondavi as an undignified end to the autonomous company he had nurtured since 1966.
An interesting tension can be seen between the Mondavi style of winemaking and the tastes of omnipotent wine critic Robert Parker. Parker duly praised Mondavi after the latter's death as having had "the single greatest influence" on U.S. quality wine (although for many that epitaph will be reserved for Parker himself). Parker's and Mondavi's approach to wine was fundamentally different however, the Parker preference being big, alcoholic wines. Recurring words of praise in Parker's publication The Advocate are "opulent", "complex", "muscular", "harmonious", "expansive" and "full-bodied". By contrast, the Mondavi style of winemaking is more understated, to the extent that Parker has criticised its wines as "increasingly light and to my way of thinking, indifferent, innocuous wines that err on the side of intellectual vapidness" (Can a wine be intellectually vapid?! Discuss...)
While the lasting Mondavi legacy may be his role in the emergence of Californian wine in the 70s, he played an equally valuable role in providing a Californian alternative to the prosaic Parker Points-driven wines which have sadly become today's norm. Whether this role will be preserved under the Constellation banner is doubtful but only time will tell.
