The last time I saw Peter Mondavi he had just turned 100 and was getting over a physical setback that had him walking with a cane. I couldn’t help noticing that it was rather a festive affair — a pretty pink with a riotous floral pattern.
It didn’t seem quite in keeping with the pioneering winemaker’s classic style and when the interview was over and it was just me and Mondavi’s son, Peter Jr., I couldn’t resist cracking, “Nice cane!”
“Oh, that was Mom’s,” Peter Jr. said with a smile. Why buy a new one, his dad figured, when there was a perfectly good cane sitting at home.
It was a minor detail but an illuminating one. The Napa Valley he helped create might grow ever more glitzy, but Mondavi hung on to his old-school values and down-to-earth approach to life.
News that Mondavi had died at his home in St. Helena, Calif., on Feb. 20, got me thinking about the handful of times I met the Napa Valley legend, and what a deep impact those few meetings had.
Mondavi, along with his better-known older brother Robert Mondavi, got his start in the business early, packing boxes for their father, Cesare’s, grape-shipping business during the Depression. Peter Mondavi later went to Stanford and thought about becoming an engineer, but found himself taking winemaking classes before going overseas for war service.
Later, the brothers worked together at their family’s Charles Krug Winery. Peter relished the chance to put his college research into the effects of cold fermentation on white and rosé wines into action. The winery also aged wine in French barrels, an unusual and expensive innovation. “Thirty five dollars a barrel!” Mondavi told me with a chuckle. “Now it’s $1,000, $2,000, who knows what!”
Unfortunately, the brothers could not get along, a rift that grew increasingly acrimonious until everything flew apart in a furious quarrel . Robert left to start his namesake winery in 1966; Peter took over at Charles Krug.
The brothers made it up over time and publicly demonstrated their amity in 2005 when they got together to make a special blend for the 25th anniversary of the Napa wine auction.
I wrote a story about the reconciliation wine, which was the first time I met Mondavi, driving up to Charles Krug to talk to him and his sons, Marc and Peter Jr. I remember being impressed that the 90-year-old Mondavi still came into work on a regular basis — and to an office at the top of two steep flights of stair, no less.
Mondavi and those stairs were a company highlight. When he was 97, winery staff made this fun video showing his daily workout that got quite a few views on YouTube.
In 2009, I drove back up to Charles Krug to talk to Peter Mondavi about his years in the wine business and get his views on the economic crisis roiling the luxury industry. When I got to the winery he was busy organizing the library wines and was bustling around with bottles of wine tucked under his arms. Robert had died a year earlier, at age 94, but Peter showed no signs of stopping. Although his sons had taken over day-to-day operations, he was still actively involved in the company and was fiercely proud of never losing control of the winery and safeguarding their vineyard holdings.
He was often described as shy and reserved, but I always found him to be a very lively interview. Here we are in the vineyard in November 2009 having a laugh. He’d just said something hilarious about another winemaker. No, I can’t tell you what it was.
I didn’t see Mondavi again until December 2015. By that time I’d changed my hair from short and brown to shoulder-length and blonde and my career status from salaried reporter to penurious freelancer.
“How are you doing?” he asked politely.
“Not that great,” I said in a burst of candor. (It was one of those cold, wet winter days when truth will out.)
“Well,” he said, “you look good!”
To this day that exchange cheers me up when I’m feeling blue.
I asked him the secret to his long life and long career, as one does.
“I love the wine business,” he said simply, “and I think that’s the important thing.”
Cheers, Mr. Mondavi, you were a Napa Valley original and I will miss you.
