How the Mondavis, America’s First Family of Wine, Went to War

On a perfect California evening in early June of 2005, around 1,000 wine lovers and wine makers gathered at the Meadowood Resort in Napa for the 25th Auction Napa Valley. It was the most successful event to date, raising $10.5 million for charity with the help of Jay Leno, who was on hand to warm up the crowd and make cracks during the live auction.

While Joy Craft, owner of a California investment firm, wasn’t the highest bidder of the evening, the loot she took home that night included the lot Wine Spectator called “the auction’s sentimental favorite”: 60 bottles produced in a one-off collaboration between the original Mondavi brothers.

Does Napa Valley Need Saving?Wine Talk

Frances Dinkelspiel, Noah Rothbaum

This lot represented the latest work of the two men who played arguably the biggest role in making California wine the player on the international stage that it is today. But, more importantly, the barrel of wine brothers Robert, then 92, and Peter, 90, donated to the auction that year was also the first they had produced together in 40 years.

In 1965, Robert and Peter had an epic falling-out that culminated in a fistfight at a family dinner that cleaved the premier California winemaking family, and the winery they ran, in two. The family drama was worthy of a scene in Succession, but its implications went far beyond just a family brawl. The rift in the Mondavi family mirrored the philosophical debate the California wine industry was facing, and it would have profound ramifications.

From big dreams to nightmare

While the Mondavi brothers weren’t born into the wine business, they came pretty close. After immigrating to the U.S. from Italy and working a series of jobs in Minnesota, their father moved his young family to California to get into fruit wholesaling. After the repeal of prohibition, the pater Mondavi shifted his focus to grapes, supplying the East Coast with the raw materials they needed to make the now legal nectar of the gods.

Both of his sons were interested in the burgeoning California wine industry, and in 1943, a 30-year-old Robert convinced his father to buy Charles Krug winery. The family-run company had deep roots in the state. Founded in 1860 by a German immigrant, Charles Krug had become one of the most successful wineries in the region. But the one-two punch of a phylloxera infestation that destroyed most of the vines and prohibition had left the winery teetering on the brink.

That’s when the Mondavis stepped in. They purchased Charles Krug as part of their growing family business with the understanding that the brothers would run it as a team. They both had big dreams and were dedicated to excelling in the craft of California wine. But, from nearly the beginning, it wasn’t an easy partnership.

For just over two decades, Robert and Peter ran Charles Krug together, with their father stepping in to settle any disagreements. But after his death in 1959, the brothers were lost without their mediator. Even their mother, who was named president of the company in their father’s will, couldn’t bring peace.

At the heart of the disagreement was how and what kind of wine they were making. When they took over the winery, Robert had taken charge of the business side of things while Peter handled production. But despite this split in duties, the elder brother Robert had a lot of his own ideas about winemaking.

Robert was a disciple for the vast potential of California wine. He wanted to create a more premium product using the latest technologies that would result in wine that could stand up to any Old World bottles. Peter was passionate about winemaking, but also a bit more conservative. He seemed content with the wine they were producing, which Robert said could more aptly be described as a high-quality table wine.

Tensions had been rising for several years before that fateful night in 1965. The final break came after punches were thrown. Like all true family squabbles, the cause of the fisticuffs—a mink coat—wasn’t actually what the fight was about. It was about no less than the future of California’s wine industry, and it would have major repercussions.

In his 1999 autobiography, Harvests of Joy, Robert admitted that he was feeling stifled in the business at the time. At the beginning of the 1960s, he toured the wine-producing regions of Europe to study what was going on in the Old World. He called the trip “a revelation.”

“We were a big, young country, oriented toward mass production and scientific research, and in our wine making we emphasized crop yields, sugar levels, and profit margins,” he wrote. “The great European wineries, with centuries of tradition and craft behind them, put their emphasis on less tangible qualities such as style, character, and bouquet.”

He decided he wanted to produce “wines that have grace and style, harmony and balance,” in the tradition of those coming out of Europe, but he believed he could do this in California and eventually produce wines that were even better than those he had tasted while traipsing across the continent.

But the greater Mondavi family was not on board with Robert’s new dream. He was proposing a grand vision that carried a lot of risk. If they did things his way and it failed, it would potentially threaten their safe and successful business. He also admitted that his strong opinions about how to make wine were particularly galling to Peter, who, as the winemaker for Krug “felt I was encroaching on his turf.”

President John F. Kennedy lit the spark that would eventually dynamite the family dynasty into two. He did this by sending what he surely thought was an innocuous invitation to Robert to attend dinner at the White House.

When Robert talks about preparations for the dinner, he characterizes himself and his wife as something akin to wine-country bumpkins. They were excited, but also concerned about “how in the world would we fare” and “what in the dickens should [his wife, Marge] wear” to a dinner at the White House honoring the Italian prime minister with no less than style icon Jackie O. in attendance.

At the time, the Krug winery was successful, but still not swimming in money. Robert explains that he and his wife were on a budget, but when he found a gorgeous mink coat at half off, he thought the $2,500 price tag was a steal, even though it was $1,000 over what he had decided to spend on a new winter coat for Marge. They knew they personally would have to pinch pennies for a little while, but it was doable.

But to Peter, the mink represented everything he was already starting to believe about his brother—“in his eyes the mink was just further proof of my lavish, irresponsible ways.”

It took two years for the situation to boil over, but the flame had been lit. In a heartbreaking turn of events, the mink wasn’t even needed for the Jackie O meeting in the end. President Kennedy was assassinated before the dinner could take place.

But, as any siblings will probably relate to, neither time nor a presidential assassination could bury the seemingly minor issue that had caused major strife between the brothers. In November 1965, the issue of the mink was brought up again at a celebratory Mondavi family dinner. As words started flying, Peter accused Robert of using company money to buy the infamous fur. According to Robert, he gave Peter three chances to take back the accusation. But when his brother refused, “I smacked him, hard. Twice.”

Robert was almost immediately kicked out of the family business. With that brotherly punch, it was decided that the two boys could not work together, and Robert would have to go. He was “fired from Krug without any significant severance pay,” according to Julia Flynn Siler, author of The House of Mondavi.

It was a family feud that shook up the entire wine industry. Immediately, Robert set about creating his own winery—Robert Mondavi Winery—which was the first new wine business to spring up in Napa since prohibition. He then proceeded to sue his family for what he believed was his due for his work with Charles Krug.

The lawsuit would be settled in 1976, awarding Krug to Peter but much of the family land to Robert. But the scene had been set for the innovation that would push California to the forefront of the wine industry. As Robert wrote, “Out of our terrible fight, though, came my liberation.”

Robert would surprise the wine world when he managed to produce his very first vintage in 1966, just months after he broke ground on his new venture. From that early achievement, he would go on to revolutionize the wine industry.

According to wine historian Paul Lukacs, “The construction of the Robert Mondavi Winery marks the effective beginning of American wine’s rise in both quality and prestige. It also helped change broad public attitudes toward wine in general and American wine in particular.”

Robert was making wine just five miles away from his brother who he was no longer speaking, to, but he was eager to differentiate himself in the innovations he was implementing in his winemaking process, in the type of wine he was striving to produce…and even in the pronunciation of the family’s last name. Today, the Monday (Mon-dah-vee) family name may be almost universally known, but before 1966, as Siler recounts, they were the Mon-day-vees.

“Robert never formally announced the change in pronunciation; it just spread through usage. In later years, his sister Helen would even jokingly introduce herself as ‘Helen Mon-dah-vee Mon-day-vee,’” Siler writes. “And soon enough many people—and especially newcomers to the valley—started referring to the entire family as ‘Mon-dah-vees’—a galling, frequent reminder to Peter of Robert’s linguistic coup over the rest of the family.”

While the original split in the Mondavi family occurred in 1965, it wouldn’t be the last. Robert’s own brood had a Succession-style showdown beginning in the 1990s caused in part by—you guessed it—two brothers both vying for control of the empire. This eventually led the family to go public in order to increase their cash flow, a decision which ended in the family losing the company in a hostile takeover just over a decade later.

But that loss also sewed the seeds for a reconciliation. While the family says that Robert and Peter had begun mending fences several years earlier, the 2005 collaboration for Auction Napa Valley came the year after Robert Mondavi had lost the company that had helped him achieve his dream of changing California wine forever.

The family announced that the collaboration was a show of “family solidarity” and that the wine would be jointly made by a son from each family.

This was the last partnership between the two brothers. Three years later, Robert died at the age of 94, while his brother died eight years after that at 101.

But their legacy remains strong today. All of their living children continue to work in the wine business. Charles Krug is now run by Peter Mondavi Jr. and his brother Marc. In the wake of the loss of the Robert Mondavi Winery in 2004, Robert’s three children launched their own vino ventures. Today, Michael runs his own winery–Michael Mondavi Estates–with his family, while his brother Tim, sister Marcia, and their families teamed up to make wine at their brand, Continuum.

But, like the issue of the mink, the grains of sand that agitate family animosities are never truly washed away. In 2005, Peter Mondavi Jr. spoke with The New York Times about how the family had come back together and the significance of the one-barrel wine collaboration.

But he also got one last, subtle barb in. According to NYT writer Frank J. Prial, “He also said that Krug, which is entirely family owned and run by his father, his brother Mark and himself, is just completing a $20 million renovation and expansion, all of it financed internally. There was never any thought of a public offering to raise cash, he said, a pointed reference to Robert Mondavi’s public issue in the 1990’s and that winery's subsequent and ultimately unsuccessful struggle to satisfy stockholder expectations.”