Napa Innovator Mondavi Dies

© Charles Krug Winery | (L-R) Peter Mondavi with sons Marc and Peter Jr at the family winery.

Napa loses one of its founding fathers with the passing of Peter Mondavi Sr on the weekend.

By Wine-Searcher staff | Posted Monday, 22-Feb-2016

Peter Mondavi Sr, one of Napa Valley's great innovators and the man who steered his family's Charles Krug Winery for more than half a century, has died at his home in St. Helena, California, at the age of 101.
Mondavi – whose fistfight with his brother Robert led to the latter leaving Krug and striking out on his own and spreading the family fame even further –began his career in 1943, when his parents bought the Charles Krug Winery, which even then enjoyed a long pedigree – Prussian emigrant Charles Krug had founded it in 1861. Mondavi worked the property with his family and eventually became president and CEO when his mother died in 1976.

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He quickly became something of a legend in Napa Valley, and some of the innovations he brought in were crucial to the style that become synonymous with the region. He introduced cold fermentation, resulting in crisp, fruity white wines, rather than the oxidized styles that had hitherto been produced.
At Mondavi's insistence, Charles Krug was the first winery in Napa Valley to import French oak barrels for aging, a common practice today. He was also among the first to plant Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Carneros.
He dedicated his life to building his family's business. Asked late in life to note his proudest accomplishment, he replied: "Never losing control of our family winery. If I could, I would tell my father: I did the best I could during the difficult years. I was determined and we held on."
He was born in Virginia, Minnesota, on November 8, 1914, to Cesare and Rosa Grassi Mondavi, Italian natives who had emigrated to the US. His mother Rosa ran a boarding house for Italian miners while Cesare ran a saloon and grocery store. He also traveled to California frequently to purchase grapes for his home-winemaking neighbors in Minnesota. Eventually, he moved the family to Lodi, California, in 1922.
Peter Mondavi got his start as a boy nailing boxes for his father's wine grape business. He went on to earn a degree in economics from Stanford University in 1938, but was drawn to winemaking, studying enology at the University of California, Berkeley. World War II interrupted his career, and he served in the military overseas, returning in 1946.
Mondavi's influence on the Napa Valley wine industry has been recognized and honored for decades. In 1986, the Napa Valley Vintners Association named him one of "Twelve Living Legends in the Napa Valley", and he was the last survivor of that group. In 2002, he graced the cover of the Wine Spectator as one of the "Napa Mavericks" who were the wine region's trailblazers. In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California State Fair. In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown honored him, along with the legacy of the Charles Krug Winery, with a proclamation for his contributions to the wine industry. Congress acknowledged him and the winery on his 97th birthday in the Congressional Record. His lifetime achievements were recognized in 2012 when he was inducted into the St. Helena-based Culinary Institute of America Vintners Hall of Fame for his industry contributions in cold fermentation and sterile filtration. "I share this award with my parents," a characteristically modest Mondavi said at that time.
Mondavi was predeceased by his wife, Blanche, and his siblings, Robert, Mary and Helen. He is survived by his daughter, Siena, sons Marc and Peter Jr – who run the family business – nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Wonderful day in Napa!

In Napa with suppliers from Bordeaux - what a perfect day!  Great tastings at Montelena, Opus One and Mumm.

Spring has arrived (much too early!) in Napa

The mustards in full bloom on Highway 29

Vintage 2016 in the making at Screaming Eagle

US Wine Trade Booming as Customers Trade Up

© Shutterstock

Prosecco is on fire, women buy more wine than men, and football isn't just for beer.

By Leslie Gevirtz | Posted Wednesday, 27-Jan-2016

The glass is more than half-full when it comes to wine sales and consumption in the United States, according to Danny Brager, the man in charge of research into alcohol at Nielsen, the global measurement company.

Beer, wine and spirits are growing faster both in volume and in value than the overall consumer packaged goods in the United States, Brager told trade members who braved a blizzard to hear him at the annual Wine Market Council gathered at New York's Museum of Modern Art on Monday.

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"We can see the average retail price for wine is up 3.3 percent; that can happen for two reasons," he said. "It can happen because people are raising prices, or it can happen because consumers are trading it up. In this case, not all of it, but almost all of it is because consumers are trading up. Instead of buying a bottle of wine for $10 you're buying a bottle of wine for $12; instead of buying it for $15, you're buying it for $20."

Women continue to buy wine more often than men, 39 percent to 34 percent and favor it both on- and off-premise, according to a Nielsen survey of 1202 US women conducted in November. A separate survey conducted by the global research firm found sparkling wine remains on fire driven by Prosecco. Annual share of US sales of sparkling wine were up 9 percent by value, 5.5 percent by volume and the average price was $11.57 for a bottle.
Drilling down a little further into the numbers, Brager found that the value of sales of Prosecco in 2015 was up 35.5 percent, the volume of Prosecco sales was up 34.3 percent, and the average price for a bottle was $11.99. Champagne, by comparison, saw an increase in the value of the wine of 9.1 percent; an increase in the volume of 6 percent and an average price of $51.54.
Some 31 percent of the growth of Prosecco came from consumers who had not bought a bottle of sparkling wine in the prior year. "Another third are people who had bought sparkling wine before, but now are buying more," Brager said.
It's not just wine that is seeing growth – it's all three categories of alcoholic beverages; beer, wine and spirits. But, of the $216 billion that US consumers spend on booze annually, beer is steadily losing market share. Wine accounts for just $32bn, while spirits account for $80bn. Beer is slightly less than half at $104bn – and falling. Since 2005, Nielsen's research shows that beer has steadily been losing market share – dropping to 47.9 percent in 2015 from 52.7 percent a decade earlier. Wine's market share has been holding fairly steady at just under 15 percent.
The Super Bowl, the climax of the American football season, is set for Sunday, February 7. When the Carolina Panthers meet the Denver Broncos, more than 114 million people will be watching on television, where the cost for a 30-second advertisement reached $4.5m last year. Some 55m women are going to be watching, according to Nielsen research. But, in many minds, it is a sport synonymous with beer.
Brager noted that the week leading up to the Super Bowl "generates 9 percent more wine sales than the average of the three weeks prior" – the same percentage lift as beer. "Many people think of Super Bowl as a beer thing, but it's not just a beer thing at all," he said.
Getting back to table wine, he noted a distinct divide at around $10 a bottle. Wines below $7.99 a bottle represent almost 60 percent of the volume sales in the US market, but that percentage is shrinking. It is down almost 7 percent by volume and nearly 6 percent by value.
But wines that sell by the bottle for more than $10.99 are seeing double-digit grow in both value and volume sales.
"I would suggest that taking prices up in our market – as fragmented as it is – is a pretty risky thing to do. Consumers have a lot of choice," he said.

Happy Year of the Monkey!