WASHINGTON -- When you see or hear the word Mondavi, most wine consumers think of Robert Mondavi, the legendary wine visionary whose death at the age of 94 heralded the end of a remarkable era in the California wine industry. But the Mondavi name reached far deeper into the fabric of Napa Valley than the aforementioned luminary, thanks to his brother Peter Mondavi Sr., who passed away last Saturday at his home in St. Helena, on the property of his Charles Krug Winery. He was 101.
Mondavi was born in 1915 in a small iron mining town in the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota to Italian immigrants Cesare and Rosa Mondavi. It was a company town, 50 miles from the Canadian line. In 1922, Prohibition was the law of the land. Cesare saw a future in supplying wine grapes, not just to iron miners in Minnesota, but to Italian families across the country. So Cesare moved his family to Lodi. Peter was 8 when the Mondavi family arrived in California.
In 1942, Peter was drafted into the Army Air Corps, and was discharged in 1946. When his parents bought the Charles Krug Winery in 1943, however, he was on leave in California, and participated in the purchase.
In an interview with the Napa Valley Register in 2014, Mondavi recalls the decision to purchase the winery. “My dad didn’t jump into anything,” Mondavi said. “So, when Bob [Robert Mondavi, Peter’s older brother] brought up the idea, dad thought about it for a while… as a condition, dad wanted Bob and me to promise to run the winery together.”
