Tell-all biography of Mondavi released

A new biography of pioneering vintner Robert Mondavi, likely to stir controversy in Napa Valley’s tight-knit wine community, was released Tuesday.

“The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty,” by Bay Area-based Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Flynn Siler, traces the family infighting and financial pressures that led to the $1.3 billion sale of Robert Mondavi Corp. to global conglomerate Constellation Brands in 2004.

Though inspired by modern day events, the book spans almost 100 years, from the time Cesare and Rosa Mondavi, Robert’s parents, pass through Ellis Island from Sassoferroto, Italy in 1906.

Delving into the Mondavis’ early days in Lodi, their important years at Charles Krug, and the decades of growth and expansion at Robert Mondavi Winery, Flynn Siler interviewed more than 250 sources, including many members of the immediate family.

The author also pored over Securities and Exchange Commission filings, court documents, board meeting notes and oral histories, and made research pilgrimages to the Mondavis’ ancestral home in Italy as well as Constellation’s “war room,” a board conference room in New York.

Flynn Siler also spoke to many alums of “Mondavi University,” as the Robert Mondavi Winery was known for years, thanks to its relentless pursuit of innovation and the long list of noteworthy winemakers who passed through its cellar doors.

Mondavi’s first winemaker was Warren Winiarski, who went on to found Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. A witness to the early days of the winery’s formation and a former college professor, Winiarski was the one who suggested Flynn Siler think about the family within the context of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”

“As I drove between San Francisco and Napa I listened to a recording of ‘King Lear’ two or three times,” Flynn Siler said. “‘King Lear’ was about an aging king who’s dividing his kingdom, and his succession issue and his inheritance issues. There are a lot of ways in which what happened to Robert Mondavi can be likened to what happened to King Lear.”

That dramatic point of view — symbolized in the book cover drawing of Mondavi’s iconic Oakville winery being torn in half — reportedly upset the family well before the book’s publication, as did the tone of early press releases, which highlighted Flynn Siler’s recounting of “alcoholism, suicide attempts and the emotional repercussions of adultery.”

“I haven’t read the book and don’t intend to,” said Timothy Mondavi, Robert’s younger son and the company’s winemaker for many years. “Robert Mondavi Winery was a magical place and we accomplished a lot of great things that I’m really proud of.

“We helped educate America as to the role fine wine had, its role on the larger table,” he added. “My guess is that was not discussed at all” in the book.

Others don’t see any new light being shed, nor any point to adding salacious details about the family’s personal workings.

“For us, this is old news, just a rehash of a difficult time that the winery and frankly the family, too, have moved on from,” said Mia Malm, of Icon Estates, who directs public relations for the Robert Mondavi Winery as well as personally for Robert and his wife, Margrit, who still both officially hold roles there. “We have exciting things going on, like the Taste3 conference and our $10 million, 10-year vineyard replanting program, and that’s what we care about.”

That Mondavi just turned 94 and remains in declining health — he has been wheelchair-bound for some time — may also keep the author from making many local friends.

The longtime Wall Street Journal financial reporter, a self-described outsider, knew that going in. But she couldn’t contain her fascination with, as she saw it, the family’s rise and fall.

“The people who started this industry are strong people, they’re remarkable,” she said. “And if you look closely at people who are pioneers or very driven entrepreneurs, there’s some pain behind that drive — and certainly that was the case with Robert Mondavi.”

Harvey Posert, a longtime public relations adviser for Mondavi who secured Robert’s last formal interview for Flynn Siler in March 2005, is none too pleased with the way things turned out.

“It’s an unbalanced view of a hardworking family and what they did,” he said. “It’s well-researched, but the valley has heard all this gossip before. This is just about the bad times; it’s sad, instead of being an instructive, cautionary tale.”

Flynn Siler’s curiosity about the Mondavis was first piqued in January 2004 by a short item buried in the business section of a local newspaper. The financial reporter found it odd to read that Michael Mondavi would be taking a leave of absence as chairman of the board of Robert Mondavi Corp., a publicly traded company since 1993.

“I called over to the company and really hit a brick wall,” Flynn Siler recalled. “(Robert) Mondavi was famous for having many, many friends amongst reporters, he was very open — that was the charm and an integral part of the culture. The response I got raised a red flag.”

She started digging and found former employees and even a family psychologist willing to go on the record about the complicated inner dynamics of the Mondavi empire. Several spoke of Robert’s infamous problems with his two grown sons, Michael and Tim, whom, some said, “(he) liked to put ... in opposite corners.”

Her first article on the Mondavis, “Grapes of Wrath: Inside a Napa Valley Empire, A Family Struggles with Itself,” ran June 3, 2004 and foreshadowed the sale of the company in December of that year to Constellation.

Just days after her article appeared, Flynn Siler showed up at the Napa Valley Wine Auction, where she would first meet the family.

“That was one of the most difficult moments for the Robert Mondavi family,” she recalled, “at an auction they helped found, a symbol of their generosity and their giving to the community for so many years, yet they were on the verge of losing control of their company.”

Already approached by a branch of Penguin Publishing about turning her article into a book, Flynn Siler quietly used the auction to better understand Mondavi’s world.

“It was a bit like being an anthropologist; this world is foreign and exotic to most people,” she said. “It’s beyond their dreams — that level of money being devoted to fermented grape juice.”

Despite the book’s unflinching look at a family’s failures, Flynn Siler doesn’t think it will ultimately tarnish Mondavi’s well-established reputation and the more than half-century’s worth of good will he earned throughout the wine world.

“His legacy as a tireless pitchman for the Napa Valley, California and the American wine industry is secure,” she said. “I think it makes no difference that Constellation bought the company he founded and I don’t think my book will in any way hurt that legacy; I think it will deepen people’s understanding of what it took to do what he did — a focused, driven personality.”

From the business point of view, she believes that instead of going public the family could have followed the pattern of many European wine families, stepping back to let others manage and then voting as a bloc to exercise control on big-picture decisions.

“The Mondavis never had that kind of agreement amongst themselves,” she explained, “which is very unusual and only explained through understanding a very long history that involves a lot of disagreements and a lot of hurt.”

At 452 pages, “House of Mondavi” goes to great lengths to explain that history, but Flynn Siler does relay some of the good times, for which the winery was also well-known.

“One of my favorite stories was (about) an ‘Out of Africa’ party,” Flynn Siler said. “They shipped in animals, the chimps were pooping and they were worried the chimps were going to poop on the guests, so they ended up having to put diapers on. I also have this wonderful picture of Robert and Margrit feeding champagne to the elephant. They had a lot of fun. People really loved working there.”

Asked if their story would resonate if the Mondavis had been in textiles or semiconductors, Flynn Siler resoundly says no.

“Wine is so glamorous — the glamour, the romance of wine, the Napa Valley. It’s aspiration.”

]You can reach Staff Writer Virginie Boone at 521-5440 or virginie.boone@pressdemocrat.com.