America’s wine ambassador passed away yesterday. He was 94.
Among Mondavi’s considerable achievements was doing battle against the neo-prohibitionists who see wine and think drunk. Mondavi strove to educate Americans about enjoying wine as a regular part of your diet, not just special occasion or party fare. He also championed a more scientific approach to wine making, one that didn’t slavishly mimic Old World traditions but instead embraced differences in climates and soils and tried to make the best possible wine reflecting those factors. North Carolina would not have its acorn of a wine region otherwise.
And anyone fortune enough to have had one of the signature tours of the Mondavi winery knows that, most of all, Robert Mondavi believed in living the good life. He did and the world’s a better place because of it. Cheers.
