Winemaking patriarch Robert Mondavi dies

By MICHELLE LOCKE | The Associated Press • Published May 17, 2008

OAKVILLE, Calif. - Robert Mondavi, the pioneering vintner who helped put California wine country on the map, died peacefully at his Napa Valley home Friday, according to Robert Mondavi Winery spokeswoman Mia Malm said. He was 94.

He was 52 and a winemaking veteran in 1966, when he opened the winery that would help turn the Napa Valley into a world center of the industry. Clashes with a brother that included a fistfight led him to break from the family business to carry out his ambitious plans with borrowed money.

At the time, California still was primarily known for cheap jug wines. But he set out to change that, championing use of cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels, all commonplace in the industry today. He introduced blind tastings in Napa Valley, putting his wines up against French vintages.

Convinced that California wines could compete with the European greats, Mondavi en gaged in the first French-American w ine venture when he formed a limited partnership with the legendary French vintner Baron Philippe de Rothschild to grow and make the ultra-premium Opus One at Oakville. The venture's first vintage was in 1979.

The success of the Mondavi winery allowed him to donate tens of millions of dollars to charity, but a wine glut and intense competition gradually cost his family control of the business. In 2004, the company accepted a buyout worth $1.3 billion from Fairport, N.Y.-based Constellation Brands.

Mondavi was an enthusiastic ambassador for wine - especially California wine - and traveled the world into his 90s promoting the health, cultural and social benefits of its moderate consumption.

Born in Virginia, Minn., Mondavi got an economics degree from Stanford University in the 1930s and went to work at the Charles Krug Winery, which his Italian-born parents had bought after moving to California from Minnesota.

He married his high school sweetheart, Marjorie Declusin, in 1937, and they had three children, Michael, Marcia and Tim.

In the late 1970s, Mondavi's first marriage ended; in his autobiography he wrote that his single-minded pursu it of the wine business was partly to blame. In 1980, he married a second time, to Margrit Biever, a native of Switzerland who had worked at the Mondavi winery since the late '60s.