Travels With Robert

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.