Robert Mondavi:TO CALIFORNIA viticulture, Robert Mondavi, who has died aged 94, was not just its grand old man, but was simply Mr Wine, such was his eminence in the Napa Valley region that he helped fashion into one of the world's premier vineyards. But his longevity also brought him sadness in his last years.
He had successfully fought widespread scepticism in his early pioneer development of Napa in the 1960s, had helped it blossom into production of world prize-winning vintages and enjoyed international admiration after his retirement.
Then he saw his beloved winery, at that time the sixth largest in the US, become the object of a corporate take-over by Constellation Brands, a conglomerate based in Fairport, New York state.
In November 2004, new management at the Robert Mondavi Corporation, in Oakville, agreed to a $1.6 billion sale to Constellation, an acquisition that pushed it ahead of Gallo of California, to become the world's biggest wine company.
It was an undignified end. An earlier move had brought, for the second time, a Mondavi family disruption. A reorganisation of the firm in anticipation of a takeover had caused the resignation of Robert's son Michael from the board in October 2004. Then his other son, Tim, also quit as vice-chairman.
Years before, the Mondavis had suffered through their version of the long, bitter Italian-American rows that devastated three other California wine families, the Parduccis, the Sebastianis and the Gallos.
Younger brother Peter Mondavi, winemaker at their modest Charles Krug winery, which the family acquired in 1943, resented Robert's sales travels and doubted his vision of moving upmarket. The row climaxed in 1963 and the brothers did not speak for decades.
As Robert told it in his 1998 autobiography, Harvests of Joy, Peter accused him of using winery money to buy his first wife Marjorie a mink to attend a Kennedy White House dinner. "Say that again and Ill hit you," Robert warned. Peter repeated the charge and Robert biffed him, twice.
Peter, now with the separate winery, CK Mondavi, was reconciled with his brother in the 1990s.
Robert's mother effectively sacked him over the rift and he decided to start his own winery in 1966, a time when Americans hardly knew their country produced wine. While he raised money to build his winery, Mondavi ignored not only those who prophesied financial disaster, but also a precise location in Napa's various microclimates.
Never the cellar-bound alchemist, but a master salesman and promoter, Mondavi plumped instead for a usefully located site that would strike travellers driving up from San Francisco. The Spanish-colonial building he built was used on his labels and became a landmark. Quickly he began all sorts of technological improvements, as well as importing French oak casks to mature his cabernets. Later he admitted his technophilia went too far, but he had injected respect for quality among his rivals.
Then, in 1976, came the historic "Judgment of Paris" that established Napa and infuriated the French. Mondavi had supported British connoisseur Steven Spurrier in his staging of a blind tasting, by nine French judges, of California and French wines in the capital.
To Gallic mortification, the best chardonnay and two of the top four other whites, as well as the winner of the red, a cabernet sauvignon, were from California.
Winners were his cellar's alumni. It was a remarkable achievement for America's formerly moribund industry.
Even back in the 1920s the family had done well. Mondavi's parents, Cesare and Rosa, had emigrated from Italy to Minnesota, and when Robert was a child, they were running a grocery and a boarding house. Rosa fed 15 Italian labourers from the nearby iron mine. In 1919, with the onset of prohibition, Cesare began to supply wine grapes from California to sell, legally, in the state.
Mondavi was born in Virginia, Minnesota. His parents' experience taught him hard work and also encouraged him to dream, he later recalled. In 1923 the family moved to Lodi, California, where Cesare had become a grape wholesaler, which was then the heart of the US wine grape production.
Robert was educated at Lodi Union high school and graduated in business economics from Stanford University, where he played rugby.
He faced the hangover of the depression when he joined Sunnyhill, a small Napa winery part-owned by his family in 1936. In 1937 he married Marjorie Declusin. Six years later the family bought Krug.
Mondavi did so well in wine that by 1978 the late Baron Philippe de Rothschild, proprietor of the legendary Château Mouton Rothschild, invited him to co-produce a wine. The result, Opus One, first retailed at $50 a bottle and still in production today, remains an ironic retort to the baron's patronising remark in 1973 that California wine "all comes out industrially uniform, like Coca-Cola".
The firm went public in 1993 and Mondavi retired from daily management. Always the promoter, he continued his general campaign for wine. He excoriated the "neo-prohibitionism" that began afflicting America in the late 1980s, when Mondavi was prohibited by the US government department controlling alcohol from quoting the Bible in praise of wine on his back labels.
One of his PR coups was to ensure that only Mondavi wines were provided at Queen Elizabeth's lunch at the White House in 1991. On one occasion, Oakville residents were startled to see a Vietnam-style squadron of helicopters hovering, but it was only Mondavi drying his vines after an unseasonal rainstorm threatened the grapes.
On his 90th birthday, he was given a celebrity party at his winery. Amid the toasts he could reflect that the company he had founded was now worth nearly $500 million, produced wine under many labels and had partnerships in France, Italy, Chile and Australia.
His first marriage ended in divorce at the end of the 1970s. In 1980 he married Swiss-born Margrit Biever. She survives him, as do his two sons, a daughter and nine grandchildren.
Robert Gerald Mondavi: born June 18th, 1913; died May 16th, 2008