No wine blogger worth their cork should let the recent news of Robert Mondavi’s death go without a mention, nor without proper respect for the man without whom, many argue, there would be no American wine industry, no cult of California Cabernet (certainly no Opus One), and no Napa Valley empire (at least, not to the extent that it exists today). The grandfather of American wine and a member of this country’s wine royalty (money, empire, scandals, and all) passed away last week at the age of 94.
There is a lot to say about Robert Mondavi, and I’ll let you look elsewhere for the facts of his life and work. My curiousity was piqued by a particular, probably overlooked detail of his early life, and it’s that detail that I’m choosing to muse over.
According to the official obituary, Robert Mondavi was born in Hibbing, Minnesota. His father, Cesare, was an immigrant from Italy who ran a grocery store/saloon in Virgnia, Minnesota until his connections to grape farmers in California led to the family’s move to Lodi. This little tidbit, totally uninteresting to most people and seemingly unrelated to Robert Mondavi’s life work, almost made me jump out of my seat when I read it (the fact that I was holding the baby kept me firmly planted). My great-grandfather, Michael Michelizzi, was an immigrant from Italy who ran a grocery/gas station/tavern/rooming house called the Merry Inn in Duluth, Minnesota. Hibbing (also famous as the birthplace of Bob Dylan…who knew that so many famous people could come from a place like Hibbing?), Virginia, and Duluth are all just a few miles away from each other in the same frozen corner of northwest Minnesota, and I can’t imagine that the brotherhood of Italian immigrant tavern owners was that large. I wonder if my great-grandfather knew Cesare Mondavi? Were they competitors? Colleagues? Collaborators? Friends?
Part of my own family lore is that folks from a different sort of southern-Italian “family” took shelter at the Merry Inn when times got tough and the heat was on. After finding a business card of my great-grandfather’s that described his role as an “importer of fine Italian products,” we couldn’t help but wonder what, exactly, during Prohibition, he took to importing. I like to imagine that wine was among the cheeses, meats, olive oils, and other Italian sundries that made his little tavern one of the more interesting places to eat in Duluth. He may even have made his own “dago red” for his family and customers. It’s a beautiful irony, although perhaps no surprise, that generations later, his great-granddaughter ended up managing a wine, cheese, and meat store that specialized in Italian imports. Perhaps that’s proof that taste is wired into our genetic code, or that we really don’t have as much say over our destiny as we think we do—I guess I know whom to thank for my belief that life without Italian wine and cured meats is a life hardly worth living.
Robert Mondavi learned this from his ancestors, too, and was dedicated to sharing the everyday pleasures of the vine with his fellow Americans. I like to imagine that because of my Italian-Minnesotan roots, perhaps I’m not that far removed from the grandfather of the American wine industry. I may never know whether the dago red my grandfather made had any connection to the grapes Cesar Mondavi grew, but I do know that every meal enjoyed with a glass of wine deserves a toast in honor of two men I never met.
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