Interview: Tim Mondavi upholds his father's winemaking tradition
Despite the vicissitudes of climate change and losing the family business, the third-generation Napa Valley winemaker remains in the game
"When prohibition hit America in the 1930s, wine was still recognised as part of the sacrament in Christian services. All the abolitionists were church goers, so they had to allow an exception for the production of sacramental wine. So friends of my grandfather Cesare in Minnesota said, 'We trust you, take our money, go to California and buy grapes so we can make wine.' You couldn't make beer or spirits but four barrels of home-made wine for medicinal and sacramental use was legal. This allowed my grandfather, who used to work in iron-ore mines and had nothing, to go to California, buy grapes and eventually go into winemaking."
"My dad, Robert Mondavi, started the winery in 1966 and over the years it expanded all around the world. We even had a relationship with Mouton Rothschild, producing the wine Opus One. I started as a winemaker there in 1974. To make a long story short, we went public in 1993 but our board grew enthusiastic about leveraging my father's good name and lost sight of the vision and the clarity of focus that my grandfather and my father had. The board just wanted to leverage everything regardless. I was against it but they decided they knew better and that I was just a silver-tongued artiste and was discounted. Anyway, it all ended in 2004."
"With our world of experience and love of great wine, my father and I and four of my children decided to produce Continuum. It's a blended wine from a fabulous estate of 173 acres high on a hill above Napa Valley."
"Food was so important to us. My grandmother was an amazing cook. My father used to say he ran his winery out of her kitchen because everyone loved her food. My father always celebrated food, or the art of the table, even as America was promoting mass production and engineered products. That's why, together with Julia Child, he developed the American Institute of Wine and Food."
"We are eating and drinking better than the kings of the past just because there is more focus on food and wine than before and we have the economic ability to pay for the work needed to elevate quality."