The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty

The Mondavis were the Kennedys of American wine - a family whose rapid ascent from its hardscrabble past was matched only by its devastating decline. A saga that spans four generations, The House of Mandavi shows how one family built and reigned over America's preeminent wine empire, until their towering achievement crumbled under the weight of sibling rivalry, bitterness, and greed.
Based on more than five hundred hours of interviews, this book presents a full portrait of Robert Mandavi, a tireless trailblazer whose energy won him fabulous wealth and made him the patriarch of an entire industry. But as this obsessively driven promoter of Napa Valley wines pursued his passions, some members of his family were wracked by suicide attempts, alcoholism, and adultery.
The tale, which chronicles the transformation of Napa Valley into one of the world's great wine making regions, begins in 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mandavi landed on Ellis Island and made his way to Minnesota's mines. Cesare started a grape-shipping business and moved his wife and children to California's Central Valley. Their business thrived, allowing them to send their two sons, Robert and Peter, to Stanford. In 1943, the Mondavis bought a derelict winery in Napa Valley. After Cesare's death in 1959, the Mondavi brothers increasingly clashed in their efforts to build the business together until their long-simmering enmity finally erupted into blows. Their barely literate mother, Rosa, meted out harsh old-world justice, banishing Robert from the family enterprise.
Determined to succeed on his own, Robert became the American wine trade's most persuasive pitchman. Over the next four decades, he made Mandavi the first name in American wine and forged partnerships with such wine royalty as the Rothschilds in France and Frescobaldis in Italy, crossing paths with a fabulous cast of characters. To assure succession at his own family business, he named his sons Michael and Timothy as co-CEOs, leaving others to mediate between the quarreling brothers. Amidst eccentric personalities, scandals, and feuds, the family took their company public in 1993. With Timothy marginalized, Michael pushed for business expansion in a frantic effort to fill his father's shoes. When his efforts backfired, the independent directors staged a coup, leading to the breakup and forced sale of Robert Mandavi's billion-dollar dream. A balanced and detailed account of one family's rise and fall, The House of Mondavi is also a quintessentially American tragedy of an overstretched business empire brought to the brink by hubris.

Julia Flynn writes front-page stories for The Wall Street Journal from San Francisco, reporting extensively on the recent turbulence at the Robert Mondavi Corp. She was a London-based foreign correspondent for the Journal and BusinessWeek, and has written for The New York Times. She is a graduate of Brown University and ColumbiaA’s Graduate School of Journalism.