At 95, Peter Mondavi Reflects on Life in Wine
From Prohibition to Great Recession, Peter Mondavi has lived a full life in wine
Peter Mondavi went to work in the wine industry during Prohibition when he was just 12, nailing together boxes for his dad's business shipping California grapes to home winemakers back east.
Eight decades later, the hammer's gone, but he's still on the job at his family's Charles Krug Winery, a survivor of boom and bust with a unique perspective on a year when the bottom dropped out of the market for luxury wines.
"Everything went too wild," he says of recent years when grape prices shot up and wine prices followed. "It just went too wild."
Though he's not as well known as older brother Robert, founder of the Robert Mondavi Winery, Peter Mondavi is an influential figure in the industry. As a college student during the Depression, he started working on cold fermentation techniques that would later elevate his family's white wines — he laughs as he remembers the early days of throwing chunks of ice into cooling towers on hot days. He also pioneered the use of French oak barrels in the 1960s.
Having that kind of experience is a plus right now, says Robert Smiley, director of wine industry programs in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.
"You know what to do and what's worked in the past, but more importantly you have brand equity. People know the Charles Krug label," he says.
This also is a time when it's good to have more than one brand.
Charles Krug, located at the top of the Napa Valley, took a high-low approach years ago, selling premium Napa Valley wines under the Charles Krug label and putting more moderately priced grapes into the second line, CK Mondavi, a strategy that paid big benefits as recession-harried consumers traded down to cheaper wines in 2009.
At 95, a birthday milestone he celebrated quietly in November, Mondavi has turned over day-to-day responsibilities to his sons, Marc and Peter Jr. But he still has definite opinions about winemaking.
