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“Wine Maketh Glad the Heart of Man” –Psalm 104:15
By Jeff Becker
Photography by Darren Phillips Photography
It was on May 24th, 1976 and the most important wine tasting of the century had just taken place in the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris. French wines, including first growths regarded as the finest wines in the world, were pitted for the first time against American wines from the Napa Valley. Thirty years ago, American wines, despite the large amount of money that was being spent to boost the industry, were not yet prominent in the world market. Tasted blindly by some of the most highly regarded palates in the wine industry (8 of whom were from the French wine industry) and then judged accordingly, the results changed the wine industry forever.
With such utterances by the judges as, “Ah, back to France,” after tasting a California Chardonnay and, “definitely California – it has no nose” dismissing a Batard-Montrachet from Burgundy, the judges’ expectations were amiss. The winners, Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon in the Red division and the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay in the White, shocked the world. American wine suddenly achieved status equal to the finest winemakers in history. The judges, upon hearing the results, are reported to have “acted badly.”
Known after as The Judgment of Paris, the event helped launch California wines into the international spotlight. Not bad for a country that for years just made jug table wine.
Robert Mondavi was not present at that day’s tasting, but perhaps his influence was. The history of American wine is typically ordered into two periods—pre-prohibition and post-prohibition. The only wines that sold well in the pre-prohibition era were fortified dessert wines. Prohibition dropped the number of wineries in California into the 100s, and when Mondavi began producing wines in the 1960s there were still only 271 California operations. With a shaky legacy, the modern era began to build wines of a higher quality. Some accredit the beginning of the modern era to Robert Mondavi.
 Called “perhaps the most important” family for premium wine by Charles Sullivan in the foreword to A Companion to California Wine, the Mondavi tradition started when Cesare (R. Mondavi’s father) immigrated to the U.S. in 1906. His work in the wine trade enabled him to eventually buy the Charles KRUG winery, where sons Robert and Peter worked on technically advancing their product. After a feud with Peter, Robert started his own winery. In 1979 he started working with Baron Phillipe de Rothschild of Mouton Rothschild (a French First Growth wine). Pushing California wines forward in the 1960s, Mondavi was one of the first to label his wines by varietal (as opposed to Red or White). He passed the company on to his child, now the seventh largest wine producer in California, selling around 6 million cases
a year.
In 2004, Constellation Brands acquired the Mondavi winery for 1.36 billion dollars. While current debate has turned to the market influence of large wineries and big-name critics in films like Mondovino (which touches on the Mondavi family) as well as the impact of globalization on small independent wine producers, Mondavi is still regarded as one of the pioneers of the California wine craze. Today, the California wine industry produced 441 million gallons of wine with an estimated value of 16.5 billion dollars (roughly equal to the GDP of El Salvador, or Coite D’Ivoire, or Latvia).
Billy Crews Restaurant in Sunland Park recently paid homage to this pioneer of American wine by hosting a Robert Mondavi wine dinner. With a representative of the winedistributor on hand to explain the wine, patrons were allowed to taste for themselves the end result of this transformation in California wine. With wines on hand like the Fumé Blanc (a name coined by Mondavi) and the 2001 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (which retails for about $125) the event allowed tasters to reminisce about the origins of great California wine. Paired with such dishes as a chilled avocado and corn soup and shrimp a la vizcaine, the evening successfully allowed wine and food to merge in a spectacular presentation of the finer
things in life. With immaculate service, a festive crowd, and fine wine swirling in glasses it was truly a tribute to how far California wines have come, and judging by the large crowd, how far they will continue to grow.
For more information about events or reservations at Billy Crews Fine Dining and Cocktails Call (505) 589-2071 or go to 1200 Country Club Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008. Billy Crews maintains one of the finer wine and spirits lists in the area, and their package store next door is frequently Sabroso’s stop for hard to find wines. |
