Robert Gerald Mondavi from Napa California

By John Saras

Robert Gerald Mondavi one of the world's most well-known wine experts has helped to bring fame to the California wines of the Napa Valley. Possibly his most recognizable contributions are his improvements and marketing strategies of wine making and wine labeling. Mondavi promoted labeling wine varietally instead of generically. This type of labeling wines is now a standard for the New World wines and is favored by most consumers around the world. New World wines are produced outside the traditional wine-growing areas of Europe and North Africa and are wines produced in the USA, South Africa and Australia.

Robert Mondavi's family immigrated to the USA form Marche, Italy. With his parents starting their own wine-making business, Mondavi learned early about this art. In 1937, Mondavi graduated from Stanford University with his degree in economics and business. He worked with his father after he started a company named Charles Krug Winery, established in 1861 in the Napa Valley, California.

After a while, Mondavi left Krug Winery and opened his own. He bought the To Kalon vineyard in Oakville in the Napa Valley California. Later in the year 1966, he and his son Michael Mondavi established the new Robert Mondavi Winery in the Napa Valley California to beat the competition from Europe, where the best wines were produced.

In 1967, Robert's wife, Margrit Biever Mondavi, started working at the winery as well.. The following year Mondavi made a dry oak-aged Sauvignon Blanc, which was not a very popular wine in California. Mondavi named this variety "Fumé Blanc." The wine was a pure success and, in time, Fumé Blanc became accepted as a synonym for Sauvignon Blanc.

Robert Gerald Mondavi successfully developed a number of high quality wines that became recognized by famous connoisseurs and vintners. In 1979, he bought Woodbridge Winery in Lodi, California which also proved to be a success. Mondavi stepped into a joint venture with Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild, who was a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty, became a Grand Prix race-car driver, a scriptwriter, a theater producer, and one of the most successful wine growers in the world. To create Opus One Winery, In the nineties he joined joint ventures with companies from Europe, South America and Australia.

In the Grand European Jury Wine Tasting of 1997, consisting entirely of European judges who blind tasted 27 Chardonnays from seven countries: the winner was Robert Mondavi's Chardonnay Reserve.

Robert Mondavi's autobiography book Harvests of Joy was published in 1998.

On December 22, 2004, Constellation Brands which is the largest wine company in the world; the largest multi-category supplier of beverage alcohol in the USA, a leading producer and exporter of wine from Australia and New Zealand; and producer of independent drinks wholesaler in the UK. bought the Mondavi winery for nearly $1.36 billion.

The Mondavi's have contributed greatly to their community. Due to their generous contributions, in October of 2002, the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the performing arts in Davis was named for them. The two are founders and major benefactors behind COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, which opened November, 2001 in the town of Napa, California. Robert and Margrit are also part founders of the restoration of the 19th Century Napa Valley Opera House and the Oxbow School, a new art school in Napa that provides grants and instruction to art students in their junior year of high school. They have contributed to the restoration of the Lincoln Theatre in Yountville, California, and have supported the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

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