Robert Mondavi Tribute Show

Robert Mondavi Tribute Show – Episode #472

May 27, 2008

Robert Mondavi was a pioneer in the wine industry and most likely is the most important person in the history of the US Wine industry. I was away when he passed so I am using this 1st show back to pay tribute!

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Comments on this episode(170) Leave a comment ›

“Great tribute to such a great person.

Robert Mondavi will always be…” by Thomas Moore
“Good wine is as sweet as love….” by Black Canyon Coffee Estate
View all 170 ›

Wines tasted in this episode:

2005 Robert Mondavi Napa Cabernet SauvignonNapa Cabernet

170 Responses

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September 1, 2009

Thomas Moore
Great tribute to such a great person.

Robert Mondavi will always be on our minds.
May 29, 2009

Black Canyon Coffee Estate
Good wine is as sweet as love.
January 13, 2009

Dessert Wine Nerd
Thank you for this tribute to a man who helped change wine in this world. You have to respect a person for that. Although this post comes late, I give respect and well wishes for his family. Heres to a great man *cheers*
July 21, 2008

MattUD
A nice little show, and good tribute to someone so influential to the business.
July 16, 2008

Tooch
Recently stopped by the Mondavi estate in Napa for some tasting. While overly commercialized, the history of the man/brand is staggering. He’ll be missed.
July 10, 2008

kjdion
love robert mundavi wines….
June 13, 2008

V Mellado
Q.E.P.D
June 4, 2008

chedwick
Gary,

Thank you for this nice tribute. I did a small Mondavi tribute too. Genius. Incredibly generous.

Chedwick
June 4, 2008

SoCal
RIP
June 2, 2008

Karl Laczko
Good show Gary, 94 years old is justification enough for a tribute, but coupled with someone who is a household name across the world the it was deserved. Not sure I’ll trust your palate this time on that 100 pointer though!

Welcome back….
June 1, 2008

Justin Thorp
Dude, I really dug this show. It was a fitting tribute, entertaining, plus I really felt like I learned something.

I think my fav episodes of WLTV have been then ones where I both learned something and was entertained.
June 1, 2008

Dan-o
GV – nice show, although not a huge Mondavi fan, it is good to give props to a pioneer in the industry!
May 31, 2008

Lydia
Gary This was beautiful, very touching! One of my favorites, already seen 3 times! Thanks for a great tribute show.
May 31, 2008

Jason S.
Very nice tribute. There are very few wineries that can associated with a single person nowadays and not a corporation. We need more Robert Mondavi’s.
May 31, 2008

thefanjestic
Nice tribute – very classy on the score.
May 30, 2008

SacramentoCharlie
He was the Henry Ford, the Bill Gates, the of the wine world. I tip my glass in thanks to Robert Mondavi.
May 30, 2008

NADINE
Hey Gary,

This is nice of you to pay tribute. I think this is sweet, hope all is well with the book and all your multiple projects, keep i up !

NADINE -
May 30, 2008

thunderball
Nice! Good stuff…liked the 100 point honorary scoring too.
May 29, 2008

Colin
Well done and welcome back!
May 29, 2008

MtnCharlie
Nice Tribute. Thanks GV
May 29, 2008

wayno da wino
Great Tribute to a Great Human Being !!!!!!
May 29, 2008

Mike d
Gary, very nice tribute, Robert was indeed a pioneer for California Wine!

A man who took America from White Zinfandel to Bob Red and Bob white(Woodbridge)to the Brands you see today, and set standards that are still used by many Wineries today. Who made Woodbridge into a 7,000,000 million case winery and still growing, who indroduced Fume’ to the American consumer and donated millions to Colleges and preserving the History of American wine. He was a great Man in many ways!
May 29, 2008

Sylvio
Hey Gary & the whole crew.

I’m the grandson of a winemaker. Not a famous one though. He was just a fair man. I croped my first grapewines in his vineyard at the age of 5.
I later worked in restaurants for many years. I had the chance to sometimes open for customers great bottles and, when I was lucky enough, even to taste some of them.
I used to tell the guests of a place where I worked, in order to entice them on such bottle : “after having his/her wine tasted, I can tell that this producer is an honest man/woman” . I make my own opinions on how winemakers shape their wine. To me, this has never been a matter of making big business and profits.

The man you pay tribute to today was a very successful wine maker, and may be the nice man your describe (I can’t tell, I never met him). However, he could have been as successful as he has been in any other kind of business.
I don’t pretend to judge the man, only talk about some of his deeds.
He once launched a joint venture with a very famous actor (who is known in the U.S.A. to be representative of where I come from) to buy some land in a very beautiful area in the south of my country. Their first request was to completely destroy and rebuild the landscape in order to plant their vineyards in a more convenient way. The local administration’s people turned them down. They were then named them as “reds against business, freedom and democracy”*… Whereas the locals just wanted to preserve their countryside from being completely turned upside down. Because making wine is also a way to stay connected somehow with the earth and nature (some producers in my country planted their wineyards by following the earth’s magnetic fields and eventualy obtain better wines).

Wine world is various, just like humanity is. Some bottles are crafted as a work of art : when you taste one of them you are surprised, and led to alternative paths. Some are arrogant (they are very powerful and overflavoured right from the start, but won’t last more than half a second in the mouth) and deceptive wines who are designed especialy to establish a mainstream standard in wine drinking.
Among others, I own a bottle of south Burgundy Macon Vinzelles “Les Morandes” 2003 (Chardonnay), made by a couple who once had a very stress-generating job. They decided to quit, then started making wine. Therefore I bought a bottle from them that happened to be a very good value for money investement (it gave me a fat/thick cream texture sensation between the tongue an the palate, then went very fresh and aromatic as it descended down the throat).
Moreover, some wine makers don’t know how to deal with marketing. They might do a better job and craft a high quality wine, they will always make less money than those who have poorer wine, but are able to properly handle the image of their product. For these reasons, I don’t think I’ll ever spend 150 bones to buy the most famous Napa Valley bottle, for the sale price does not represent the value of what’s inside, but more what’s written on its label. I’d rather go for a cheaper priced Chilean cabernet sauvignon, Miguel Torres’ “Manso de Velasco” for instance. Because price cannot be the only benchmark (you also tell this in your show). For some wines can be made by partners in business. Investors/wine makers, chemists and critics who follow a 4 steps pattern : the first one buys under-estimated vineyards at low price, then makes wine with the help of the second one who micro-oxygenates. Then the third one overrates its quality in paper magazines. Finally the product can be sold at a way too high sale price, and generate an awful lot of money*.

On top of that, trade competition is unfair between wine makers all over the world. In some countries, the administration constrain wine makers with very restrictive rules, whereas some others have more latitude on their work process. As a result, I’ve tasted beverages labelled wine that were completely irrelevant regarding what I’ve been taught as being wine.

Regarding some critics, I tend to remain sceptic. What a wine drinker feels when he tastes can be completely different from his fellow co-drinker. Especially when it comes to flavours. I tend to think this is just because every person is different from another : our feelings refer to a personal background. It is a synaesthesia built on sensitive memory. Each and everyone’s is idiomatic. Smell can be a very powerful (and sometimes tricky) sense that works like an mental image catalogue. For instance, a peculiar aroma captured in my daily life can bring me back to a longtime memory, just like “Proust’s madeleine “. Thus I try to be cautious when some critics (not all of them) speak about wine’s flavor, because what one refers to, won’t match in every way with the feelings I have.
Though it’s a precious work of education you do, by improving wine lovers’ knowledge, some critics just behave as salesmen. Among them, a worldwidely famous one (who tends to uniform the wine taste all over the planet) is known to show contempt towards a production area from my country. He once had a very good bottle coming from this specific area blindtasted in a Bordeaux wine estate and completely failed as he answered this was a Bordeaux wine. His senses were just tricked by the way this wine had been crafted.
Therefore I prefer to tell my bottle-mates, whenever we share one, to build their own idea of what they like and what they don’t, rather than following the mainstream “doxology”.

I’ll ask you to apologise the length of my post, its digressions and possible mistakes. I tried to make myself as clear as possible, though English is not my native langage.

I’ll check if I can find the Napa cabernet you tried today in my country (might be ok, and less than 20 bucks may be honnest regarding its quality) and regularly keep on watchin your very interesting show on Miro.

Please, give info on when the film you talked about is released, I’d really like to watch it.

All the best,
Cya.

*Cf Johanthan Nossiter’s Mondovino (perhaps the man was angry at losing an oportunity to make big profits)
* Ibid
May 28, 2008

wannaBconnoisseur
Nice job GV.
May 28, 2008

Tom P
Nice Tribute.