Family Business
Kava in South Kona
I caught a glimpse of the sign out of the corner of my eye: “Ma’s Nic Nats & Kava Stop.” I made a quick U-turn on the Mamalahao Highway in South Kona and headed back, pulling across from a laundromat where children chased each other outside as their parents waited for clothes to dry. From…
Read MoreRevisiting the Mondavis
A few years back, a friend asked me to donate a unique item to a fund-raiser for a local non-profit: to lead the winning auction bidders on a bike tour of Napa Valley, showing them favorite spots I’d discovered in my research for The House of Mondavi…
Read MoreMo’ Bob Mon …
The elegant Mondavi arts center, above, is a dramatic addition to the rural landscape of Davis — and it will soon be joined by the Robert Mondavi Institute, depicted in an artists’ rendering below. Anyone driving east from San Francisco on Highway 80, the 10-lane transcontinental highway to Nevada and points east, can’t miss the…
Read MoreKing Lear and The House of Mondavi
Two kings: Ian Holm as Lear and Robert Mondavi. Photo of Holm from the University of London; photo of Mondavi by Mike Kepka/SFGate.com What can Shakespeare teach us about a troubled family business? That’s a question I’ll try to answer at a discussion hosted by a long-lasting and large book group in Burlingame, Calif., this…
Read MoreRobert G. Mondavi, 1913-2008
Robert Mondavi as Bacchus, with wife Margrit. Photo: Avis Mandel for Pate International During the three years it took to research and write The House of Mondavi, I interviewed hundreds of people, poured through legal and corporate documents, and studied old photographs from high school yearbooks and other fragments of the past, searching for clues…
Read MoreMeritage wines — and a fascinating glimpse into family business
Kim Stare Wallace — is she drinking a Meritage?Photo from Dry Creek Vineyard As a newcomer to the wine world when I began The House of Mondavi, I discovered that its inhabitants spoke in a distinct language not so easily grasped by outsiders. When Michaela Rodeno, CEO of Napa Valley’s St. Supéry winery, first introduced…
Read MoreMondavi as a case study
Harvard case studies probe for the veritas behind business decisions. The Harvard Business School has done six case studiesMichael Porter, a Harvard professor who wrote The Competitive Advantage of Nations, a book that I read and found fascinating after being assigned it many years ago in business school. Although I wouldn’t recommend them as bedtime…
Read MoreTwenty-six generations….and counting: The Antinori wine dynasty
The Palazzo Antinori in Florence, Italy. Imagine a family business that has passed from one generation to the next twenty-six times, surviving everything from the scourge of Bubonic plague, to the invasion of Napoleon, two world wars, and even the birth and death of the wine cooler. The Wall Street Journal’s deputy bureau chief for…
Read MoreThe Aging King of the Napa Valley
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger greets Margrit and Robert Mondavi at the December ceremony inducting Robert into California’s Hall of Fame.AP Photo by Steve Yeater One of the questions I’m often asked when I talk at library fundraisers or with book groups about The House of Mondavi is how Robert Mondavi is doing. Still referred to…
Read MoreThe Poet-Farmer of the Napa Valley – Warren Winiarski
After a quiet lunch in Rutherford yesterday, I drove back home along the Silverado Trail. As rain droplets began hitting my windshield, I passed the modest sign for the winery whose founder, to me, is an almost perfect example of the idealism of many of the early vintners who came to Napa Valley, searching for…
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