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Jazz and Fine Wine/ Robert Mondavi's "Time" Has Come

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Powerful ambassador for California wine. One of the best-known figures in American viticulture, had little formal training in making wine. His exile from the family business became the stuff of legend.

Robert Mondavi, the pioneering Napa Valley vintner whose drive and salesmanship revolutionized the way the world thought about California wine, died peacefully Friday at his Yountville, Calif., home, a spokeswoman for the Robert Mondavi Winery said. He was 94.

The son of an Italian-born grape wholesaler from the Central Valley, Mondavi was, at the end of his life, one of the best-known figures in American viticulture, with a name that was almost synonymous with California wine. His Cabernets and Chardonnays have been served at the White House and sold by the glass at Disney theme parks. His Cain-and-Abel exile from his family business after a fistfight with his brother was the source of legend.

His Mission-style winery in Oakville is a landmark and wine label icon. Though he had little formal training in winemaking, he is credited with concocting Fum Blanc in the 1960s, and with popularizing Chardonnay, in the words of Wine Spectator, “as the great California white."

At a time when the phrase “fine domestic wine" was considered an oxymoron in the United States, Mondavi insisted that California wine could be positioned as a status symbol -- a strategy that cleared the way for the modern era of $2,000 cult bottles of Screaming Eagle and trophy wineries.

When Chateau Mouton-Rothschild of Bordeaux approached him about a Franco-American collaboration -- the equivalent, in the words of wine industry consultant Vic Motto, of “Goliath coming to David to learn how to throw stones" -- the resulting Opus One Cabernet Sauvignon not only sold for a then-unprecedented $50 a bottle but validated his vision for the industry.

In a statement, state Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) called Mondavi “the godfather of American wines."

“His passion for excellence and his ability to inspire people were the keys to his success. . . . He put Napa on the map," said Wiggins, who heads a Senate committee on California's wine industry.

Mondavi also put wine on the dinner tables of Americans, said Thomas Keller, owner of Yountville's French Laundry and Per Se in New York City. “By bringing wine to the forefront, he helped establish the culinary fabric of the country and the pleasure we find sitting around the table with friends and family," Keller said Friday.

And Doug Shafer, president of Shafer Napa Valley Wines, told The Times: “Napa Valley wines are considered among the best in the world because of Robert Mondavi's vision. He believed in California wine with every bone in his body."

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