Much has been written about the rise and fall of the Mondavi empire, including a very good book detailing in every last gory detail, its decay once the venerable winery went public in the early nineties, and its subsequent sale and dismemberment. But my opinions about all issues Mondavi are hardly objective and come from a different perspective, having worked for the family during an interesting part of their history and having the very unique opportunity to spend lots of time with Mister, Margrit, Tim and Michael up close and personal while looking after their interests in Asia and even, occasionally now, as I deal with Michael and Tim in their current incarnations.
Though I could probably write my own book with what I observed during my six-months' training at the winery in Oakville: making wine, using my Mondavi-sized expense account to entertain Asian guests, having the keys to the Vineyard Room wine closet and dealing with the winery's Kremlin-like bureaucracy and Machiavellian in-fighting. Then there was my tenure in Tokyo, shepherding various Mondavis around Japan and the Pacific Rim. Though a lot of it was incredibly frustrating and ultimately proved to be lethal to my career, I make a point of putting on my rose colored glasses when looking back on my days there. More than anything, I was incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to get to intimately know one of the giants of our industry, a man whose charisma, integrity and vision inspired us all; a man whose warmth and genuineness was the same in private as it was in public. There will never be another like him.
The highlight of my Asian tenure was a two-week junket spent with Robert and Margrit in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. The ostensible reason for the trip was a five day wine event in Hong Kong that brought together a host of wine luminaries from around the world including Johnny Hugel, the seventh generation owner of Hugel from Alsace, the irrepressible Wolf Blass from Australia, Christian Moueix (in his enfant terrible period) from Bordeaux, glass maker George Riedel and close Mondavi friends the late Barney and wife Bella Rhodes, great wine collectors and owners of the great Bella Oaks Vineyard in Napa. One of the focal points of the Hong Kong stay was a luncheon I helped organize for the Hong Kong Sommelier Association at the Restaurant Petrus at the top of the Hotel Shangri-La. As a spectacle, it was hard to beat this incredible dining room all decked out with massive liveried staff, gorgeous plateware and what looked like a million giant Riedel Sommelier stems, but I was very nervous sitting at the head table with the Mondavis, Riedel and Moueix who, not liking the way his Chateau Petrus 1975 was showing, astounded the assembled sommeliers by whisking the wine in his mile-high Riedel Bordeaux glass with a fork! But, as always when there was an audience, Mister Mondavi and Margrit were in great fettle, Mister holding forth in his high pitched voice on his favorite themes (This was like 18 years ago and I don't remember if he had yet arrived at his patented 'Soft as a baby's butt but with the depth of a Pavarotti' mantra yet, but he always had something pithy to say about his wine) and generally having a wonderful time. Better for me, though, was the outstanding seafood lunch we had the next day on an outlying island with the entire cast of characters. Not only was the relaxed picnic a ton of fun, I spent the hour or so each way on the junk motoring out to the island drinking like seven kinds of Tasmanian Pinot Noir and generally behaving badly with John Avery, the affable scion of the old Avery Wine Merchants in London. But best of all was the off time spent with the Mondavis in Hong Kong, visiting Mister's favorite tailor, testing the limits of the Mondavi American Express card in exclusive buzz-for-admittance Chinese antique galleries and eating dim sum and noodles from street stalls. Margrit picked up a small Tang dynasty painted ceramic 'severed pig's head on a platter' from a dealer's stall in the Stanley Market and gave it to me for my wife. We keep it next to the stove in our kitchen to this day.
From Hong Kong we flew to Taipei (the Mondavis in the front of the plane and me in the back, of course) where we spent an incredible day, first at an unbelievably extravagant luncheon for 400 in full period costume at a giant temple complex also used as the set of countless Kung Fu movies and then at a small, very late dinner in the dining room of Taipei's landmark Grand Hotel, whose incredible airplane hangar sized kitchen was used in 'Eat, Drink, Man, Woman', one of my all-time favorite food movies. At lunch, it was again Robert Mondavi in his glory, sitting on a cinnabar throne alongside Queen Margrit, resplendent in full period regalia, right down to the long pony tail, ever the Mandarin, benevolently bestowing his 400 minions with bottles of Fume Blanc Reserve and older vintages of Cab Reserve from six liter bottles.
After Taiwan, it was Singapore and my one and only (so far) stay at the legendary Raffles Hotel, in the Ava Gardner suite, no less. The Mondavis and I had dinner at the modest apartment of Singapore's most influential individual wine enthusiast, Dr. N.K. Yang. Yang's apartment had one room in his basement digs converted into a wine cellar and I saw more Opus One in it than I had allocated for the entire country. Everything else you could possibly imagine was crammed into that cellar and 12 of us managed to suffer through a catered meal with Yang's French wines to balance each of our Mondavi offerings: DRC Le Montrachet alongside Mondavi Chardonnay Reserve, R-C with the Pinot Noir Reserve (I mean, what else would you drink?), and old vintages of Mouton, Opus and Mondavi Cab Reserve. After putting my exhausted charges (actually, it was very hard to run Mr. Mondavi out of energy....if you wanted to get him- and yourself- to bed before 1 or 2 AM, I learned, the key was keeping him from catching any of the quickie catnaps that quickly recharged his seemingly bottomless battery) to bed, I hung out at the Raffles bar until the wee hours drinking old Armagnac with Singapore's most famous sommelier, Ignacious Chan.
The trip ended for us in Thailand where, for me, the highlight of the whole journey happened on the way in from the airport, a nearly three hour slog, thanks to Bangkok's famously horrible traffic and some incredibly filthy weather. In the darkened limo, I was sitting in the front seat next to the driver who, to the best of my knowledge, spoke not a word of English, while Mister and Margrit sat in the back, in relaxed, expansive moods, speaking in low tones with each other about the 'kids', the winery, succession and a host of other, very intimate subjects. I swore to myself I would forever keep in confidence what I overheard that night, and I intend to do that, but that doesn't make me very sorry that I didn't have a tape recorder in that car.
I saw the Mondavis again in Oakville after I left their employ: at Mister's various birthday parties, an Opus One event and, by chance, at a restaurant in Yountville, and, though they were very warm to me, it was clear that those halcyon days of travel and indulgence were another era.
So, rest in peace, Mister Mondavi and here's a glass of old Fume to all our collective memories of those wonderful moments in Oakville's own version of Camelot.
Coda: Not too long ago, on a whim, I pulled out a bottle of 1987 Mondavi Pinot Noir Reserve, complete with its Japanese strip label identifying itself as a bottle I had dragged back from my stay there. The Pinot Noir program was a huge point of emphasis during the first few years of my tenure with the winery but I bet very few of us who helped make that wine ever expected it to cellar 12 years. Well, it was fabulous. Complex and truffle-y on the nose and silky and sweet on the palate, it was a stunning wine that reminded me that Robert Mondavi Winery was often guilty of understatement and subtlety in an era where obviousness and bombast were fast becoming the order of the day.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Background To A Particular Fall Ritual
Every year around this time I get my ridiculously overwrought, gold embossed Opus One pre-sell application requiring my retina scan and signature in blood to guarantee PRIMA's allocation. The matte finished, high production value pamphlet usually includes the winery's notes on the new (best ever!) vintage of Opus as well as a synopsis of previous vintages (if you count the 2008 vintage in barrel and the 2009 vintage sitting out there waiting to get ripe, now numbering 31 strong). The ceremonial reception of the pre-sell from my Southern Wines and Spirits rep, my barking and balking at the new (never lower) price and my derisive comments about how damned seriously they take themselves at that winery are sort of an annual right of passage for me and I have to admit I look forward to it, even if my poor rep probably cringes outside for an hour before slinking in to deliver the news.
I have a long association with Opus One thanks to my having worked for them for four years selling their wine in Japan and 21 other countries in the Far East, as well as now 15 vintages of buying and selling it here at PRIMA. Well, it wasn't so much 'selling' it in the Far East: it was more like 'controlling' it for, in those days Opus One was an incredibly precious commodity.
Two of the funniest Opus stories I have involve Japan and the winery's unfortunate importation and distribution arrangement. In those days, Robert Mondavi Winery was imported by the beverage giant Suntory, while the stable of wines controlled by the Mouton-Rothschild family (Mouton, Clerc-Milon, Mouton Cadet, etc.) was imported by a very tiny, Euro-centric outfit that also brought in Louis Latour and, if I remember correctly, the wildly idiosyncratic Domaine Ott rose, among a few other interesting French wines. In their wisdom, almost the inevitable result of the constant internecine fighting between the Mondavi and Mouton sides of the Opus equation, it was decided that Opus One should be imported and distributed in Japan by both companies. Dual arrangements are not unusual but rarely were there stranger bedfellows than tiny Barklay Imports, and their decidedly aged, Francophile, Old School sales force and the 400-pound gorilla in the room, Suntory, Ltd. and their legions of young, workaholic sales soldiers. And, being Mondavi's and Opus' sole rep on the ground in Tokyo, it was yours truly that got ground to dust between them.
First there was what I liked to call 'The Queen Alice Bag Caper" that included several of the most awkward moments of my fifteen years in Japan. It involved an Opus One luncheon I arranged at one of the most beautiful and precious French restaurants in Tokyo called Queen Alice. The event was for the Japan Sommelier Association and was arranged because I had Michael Mondavi in town. Starting right from the invitation process, this event spelled trouble. Although I would do the actual inviting, the final list of sommeliers was to be 50% submitted by Suntory and 50% by Barklay. It was my goal to invite many of the up-and-coming Young Turk sommeliers in Tokyo to have them actually taste the Opus they might actually someday sell, but Suntory steadfastly maintained that since there was an actual Mondavi in the house, we had to first invite a score of senior sommeliers, many of whose actual table service days were long past, and could care less about Opus One in particular, and any wine from California in general. And Barklay's list was much the same: doddering octogenarian sommeliers from Tokyo's old guard French restaurants like Maxim's. I had two good friends at Suntory, though, and, together, we stage-managed an end-run, getting invites to many of our 'target' somms and when I 'accidentally' forgot to mail some of those other invites, there miraculously was room for everyone we wanted to attend.
The luncheon was to feature a live telephone hook up between Michael Mondavi in Queen Alice and the Baroness Philippine back at Mouton to share pithy and amusing anecdotes about Opus including the inside scoop of that infamous meeting between the Baron Philippe and Robert Mondavi in the Baron's bedroom where Opus One was first conceived. But, of course, the phone call didn't quite come off that way. What no one in the room knew, Mouton-Mondavi relations were at a particularly low ebb and there was cross-cultural sparring at every level, from the French and American winemaking teams, all the way to the very top of the partnership. With me acting as nervous translator, and Michael grinning like a Cheshire Cat the whole time, he and Philippine had, over a lousy phone connection, one of the most snarky, acrimonious conversations ever, filled with double entendre, veiled threats and general bad will. Of course, Michael and I were the only native English speakers in the room and it was left to me to try and calm the growing unease in the room and say "ha ha, listen to that playful repartee. Don't they love each other?" I was never so happy to see a phone call end in my life. But that, of course, wasn't the end of my no-good-very-bad luncheon at Queen Alice. I had (quite thoughtfully, I imagined) budgeted to give each participant the parting gift of a half bottle of the new vintage of Opus One, and had lugged them across Tokyo and had them at the ready as our testy little luncheon wound to a close. It was my good friend at Suntory, Kikkawa-san, who, at the very last minute, noticed my faux pas. How could we give out gifts without bags? In Japan, NEVER! All of the functionaries were appalled, especially the longtime Japan residing gaijin stupid enough to ignore the so obvious! Anyway, a Suntory flunky was dispatched to the office and returned, just as the final sips of the espressos were being consumed by the distinguished attendees- with wonderful half bottle bags all marked, of course, withSuntory’s distinctive logo. This is when Barklay’s Opus One rep, invisible throughout the entire luncheon and, in fact, throughout the entire process of putting together the event, finally made his presence known. Wasn't this supposed to be a joint venture and didn't those bags say Suntory on them? Short of committing seppuku with one of Queen Alice's oversized forks, I guess there wasn't much I could do and if those Suntory bags swayed any of those sommeliers to buy their Opus from Suntory and not Barklay that vintage, I never heard of it. The arrangement between Opus and those two companies, I understand, didn't last much longer than my own tenure in Japan (about a year or so more) and I don't think Barklay even exists anymore, and Suntory and Mondavi had their own divorce a few years later.
As I await my annual pre-sell to be delivered, one other classic Opus story comes to mind. This involved a very high end resort that was being opened on the island of Shikoku in the early nineties. The resort’s ultra-high end restaurant was planning on having one of the largest wine lists in Japan and the eccentric, well-heeled owner was determined to feature verticals of many of the world's most prestigious wines, including, of course, Opus One. He contacted both Suntory and Barklay and, between the two of them, managed to cobble together most of the vintages he required with the notable exception of the first two: 1978 and 1979, which Opus aficionados will remember were packaged three bottles each to a wooden six pack and presented as Opus' first commercial release. None of these were ever sent to Japan, of course, as very few were made and so one sunny Tokyo afternoon I returned home to two messages on the Mondavi machine: one each from my friendly Barklay and Suntory representatives in Osaka, the nearest branch offices to Shikoku. "Uh, John-san, please have Opus One send us one of those cases of 1978-1979 for X-san at his resort.”
Yeah, right.
And that's basically how I responded. Opus One, first of all, rarely provides library wines to anyone for any reason. I mean if you wanted a bottle of 1983 for The Make A Wish Foundation, maybe. But for some restaurant in Shikoku, Japan? And for the rarest wine in their cellar? I don't theeeeenk so.
And that's when things got ugly. Both of Opus' importers began a steady siege of my answering machine (no cell phones in those days thank goodness) as Mr. X at his resort had resorted to playing dirty, threatening to keep Suntory's booze off his bar and Mouton-Cadet off his list if these two ineffectual companies couldn't supply a few measly bottles of wine for his damned vertical. I, in turn, used all of my powers of persuasion to move the powers-that-be, back in Oakville, to no avail.
Push came to shove, though, when the Big Cheese from Suntory's Osaka branch, a man I had never seen in person and who basically lived in legend, called me on my home phone one evening and mentioned that Mondavi Woodbridge sales were sure down in Western Japan and maybe a few more Suntory resources could be thrown into the fray if only (insert tooth sucking sound)………I didn't need to finish the sentence. The next day, I sat down and wrote what turned out to be a four page pseudo Greek myth inserting Greek God sounding pseudonyms for all the various players in my own tragedy here in Japan and asking the Gods up in the clouds of Mount Oakville to look favorably upon my petition, while painting dire consequences worthy of anything Ares could cook up should Zeus not show some benevolence. Not a week after I posted said missive, an original wooden six-pack consisting of 3 bottles each 1978 and 1979 Opus One arrived via air-Takuyubin on my doorstep. And I was very pleased to be able to deliver them myself, lest Barklay and Suntory squabble over who would get credit for the sale. The managing director in Opus in those days, and a good friend of mine to this day, says he kept the entreaty in his desk until the day he left the company.
So, when is that damned pre-sell going to be delivered? I have this urge to bitch someone out.
I have a long association with Opus One thanks to my having worked for them for four years selling their wine in Japan and 21 other countries in the Far East, as well as now 15 vintages of buying and selling it here at PRIMA. Well, it wasn't so much 'selling' it in the Far East: it was more like 'controlling' it for, in those days Opus One was an incredibly precious commodity.
Two of the funniest Opus stories I have involve Japan and the winery's unfortunate importation and distribution arrangement. In those days, Robert Mondavi Winery was imported by the beverage giant Suntory, while the stable of wines controlled by the Mouton-Rothschild family (Mouton, Clerc-Milon, Mouton Cadet, etc.) was imported by a very tiny, Euro-centric outfit that also brought in Louis Latour and, if I remember correctly, the wildly idiosyncratic Domaine Ott rose, among a few other interesting French wines. In their wisdom, almost the inevitable result of the constant internecine fighting between the Mondavi and Mouton sides of the Opus equation, it was decided that Opus One should be imported and distributed in Japan by both companies. Dual arrangements are not unusual but rarely were there stranger bedfellows than tiny Barklay Imports, and their decidedly aged, Francophile, Old School sales force and the 400-pound gorilla in the room, Suntory, Ltd. and their legions of young, workaholic sales soldiers. And, being Mondavi's and Opus' sole rep on the ground in Tokyo, it was yours truly that got ground to dust between them.
First there was what I liked to call 'The Queen Alice Bag Caper" that included several of the most awkward moments of my fifteen years in Japan. It involved an Opus One luncheon I arranged at one of the most beautiful and precious French restaurants in Tokyo called Queen Alice. The event was for the Japan Sommelier Association and was arranged because I had Michael Mondavi in town. Starting right from the invitation process, this event spelled trouble. Although I would do the actual inviting, the final list of sommeliers was to be 50% submitted by Suntory and 50% by Barklay. It was my goal to invite many of the up-and-coming Young Turk sommeliers in Tokyo to have them actually taste the Opus they might actually someday sell, but Suntory steadfastly maintained that since there was an actual Mondavi in the house, we had to first invite a score of senior sommeliers, many of whose actual table service days were long past, and could care less about Opus One in particular, and any wine from California in general. And Barklay's list was much the same: doddering octogenarian sommeliers from Tokyo's old guard French restaurants like Maxim's. I had two good friends at Suntory, though, and, together, we stage-managed an end-run, getting invites to many of our 'target' somms and when I 'accidentally' forgot to mail some of those other invites, there miraculously was room for everyone we wanted to attend.
The luncheon was to feature a live telephone hook up between Michael Mondavi in Queen Alice and the Baroness Philippine back at Mouton to share pithy and amusing anecdotes about Opus including the inside scoop of that infamous meeting between the Baron Philippe and Robert Mondavi in the Baron's bedroom where Opus One was first conceived. But, of course, the phone call didn't quite come off that way. What no one in the room knew, Mouton-Mondavi relations were at a particularly low ebb and there was cross-cultural sparring at every level, from the French and American winemaking teams, all the way to the very top of the partnership. With me acting as nervous translator, and Michael grinning like a Cheshire Cat the whole time, he and Philippine had, over a lousy phone connection, one of the most snarky, acrimonious conversations ever, filled with double entendre, veiled threats and general bad will. Of course, Michael and I were the only native English speakers in the room and it was left to me to try and calm the growing unease in the room and say "ha ha, listen to that playful repartee. Don't they love each other?" I was never so happy to see a phone call end in my life. But that, of course, wasn't the end of my no-good-very-bad luncheon at Queen Alice. I had (quite thoughtfully, I imagined) budgeted to give each participant the parting gift of a half bottle of the new vintage of Opus One, and had lugged them across Tokyo and had them at the ready as our testy little luncheon wound to a close. It was my good friend at Suntory, Kikkawa-san, who, at the very last minute, noticed my faux pas. How could we give out gifts without bags? In Japan, NEVER! All of the functionaries were appalled, especially the longtime Japan residing gaijin stupid enough to ignore the so obvious! Anyway, a Suntory flunky was dispatched to the office and returned, just as the final sips of the espressos were being consumed by the distinguished attendees- with wonderful half bottle bags all marked, of course, withSuntory’s distinctive logo. This is when Barklay’s Opus One rep, invisible throughout the entire luncheon and, in fact, throughout the entire process of putting together the event, finally made his presence known. Wasn't this supposed to be a joint venture and didn't those bags say Suntory on them? Short of committing seppuku with one of Queen Alice's oversized forks, I guess there wasn't much I could do and if those Suntory bags swayed any of those sommeliers to buy their Opus from Suntory and not Barklay that vintage, I never heard of it. The arrangement between Opus and those two companies, I understand, didn't last much longer than my own tenure in Japan (about a year or so more) and I don't think Barklay even exists anymore, and Suntory and Mondavi had their own divorce a few years later.
As I await my annual pre-sell to be delivered, one other classic Opus story comes to mind. This involved a very high end resort that was being opened on the island of Shikoku in the early nineties. The resort’s ultra-high end restaurant was planning on having one of the largest wine lists in Japan and the eccentric, well-heeled owner was determined to feature verticals of many of the world's most prestigious wines, including, of course, Opus One. He contacted both Suntory and Barklay and, between the two of them, managed to cobble together most of the vintages he required with the notable exception of the first two: 1978 and 1979, which Opus aficionados will remember were packaged three bottles each to a wooden six pack and presented as Opus' first commercial release. None of these were ever sent to Japan, of course, as very few were made and so one sunny Tokyo afternoon I returned home to two messages on the Mondavi machine: one each from my friendly Barklay and Suntory representatives in Osaka, the nearest branch offices to Shikoku. "Uh, John-san, please have Opus One send us one of those cases of 1978-1979 for X-san at his resort.”
Yeah, right.
And that's basically how I responded. Opus One, first of all, rarely provides library wines to anyone for any reason. I mean if you wanted a bottle of 1983 for The Make A Wish Foundation, maybe. But for some restaurant in Shikoku, Japan? And for the rarest wine in their cellar? I don't theeeeenk so.
And that's when things got ugly. Both of Opus' importers began a steady siege of my answering machine (no cell phones in those days thank goodness) as Mr. X at his resort had resorted to playing dirty, threatening to keep Suntory's booze off his bar and Mouton-Cadet off his list if these two ineffectual companies couldn't supply a few measly bottles of wine for his damned vertical. I, in turn, used all of my powers of persuasion to move the powers-that-be, back in Oakville, to no avail.
Push came to shove, though, when the Big Cheese from Suntory's Osaka branch, a man I had never seen in person and who basically lived in legend, called me on my home phone one evening and mentioned that Mondavi Woodbridge sales were sure down in Western Japan and maybe a few more Suntory resources could be thrown into the fray if only (insert tooth sucking sound)………I didn't need to finish the sentence. The next day, I sat down and wrote what turned out to be a four page pseudo Greek myth inserting Greek God sounding pseudonyms for all the various players in my own tragedy here in Japan and asking the Gods up in the clouds of Mount Oakville to look favorably upon my petition, while painting dire consequences worthy of anything Ares could cook up should Zeus not show some benevolence. Not a week after I posted said missive, an original wooden six-pack consisting of 3 bottles each 1978 and 1979 Opus One arrived via air-Takuyubin on my doorstep. And I was very pleased to be able to deliver them myself, lest Barklay and Suntory squabble over who would get credit for the sale. The managing director in Opus in those days, and a good friend of mine to this day, says he kept the entreaty in his desk until the day he left the company.
So, when is that damned pre-sell going to be delivered? I have this urge to bitch someone out.
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