California wine legend, patriarch Peter Mondavi is dead at 101

Peter Mondavi Sr. died Saturday at age 101

(Image credit: Facebook/CharlesKrugWinery)

last updated 23 February 2016

In 1986, the Napa Valley Vintners trade group named "12 living legends in the Napa Valley," and the last of those legendary winemakers, Peter Mondavi Sr., died at home on Saturday, a family spokeswoman said Sunday. He was 101. Mondavi ran his family-owned Charles Krug Winery, purchased by his Italian immigrant parents in 1943, from 1976, when his mother died, until his retirement in 2015.

During his long tenure atop one of California's last remaining family-owned wineries, he introduced several innovations that helped transform California's Napa Valley from a jug-wine backwater to a global elite wine region, including aging wine in imported French oak barrels and developing a cold-fermentation process for white wines.

Mondavi was also famous for a fight with his older brother Robert over control of the family winery in 1965, which reportedly included a fistfight and the banishment of Robert from Charles Krug management. Robert Mondavi went on to found his own eponymous winery and become a trailblazing vintner in his own right. Robert Mondavi died in 2008, four years after Robert Mondavi Winery was grabbed up in a corporate takeover. When asked recently about his greatest accomplishment, his family recalled, Peter Mondavi replied: "Never losing control of our family winery. If I could, I would tell my father: 'I did the best I could during the difficult years. I was determined and we held on.'"

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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