Let's Hear It for the Little Guys

I used to like to read People magazine. A lot. I lost my taste for it, though, I can't even remember when, but I stopped reading when it started boring me unto death. So right now I'm reading The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. Oh my goodness.

I would say that in some ways, it is like reading People, in that you do learn quite a bit about the most personal details of the Mondavis' lives, including emotional insecurities (kind of nice to know that everyone's got'em), spending habits, drinking habits, food preferences, temperamental quirks, extramarital affairs, family spats, and longtime grudges.

What makes it different? Maybe partly because there is so much information about all the significant people in the drama that you do get more of a sense of who they are and what motivates them and what makes them happy and what makes them suffer, which inevitably makes you feel more sympathetic toward them. No one's a saint, no one's a devil. In a way, you see this Greek tragedy unfolding, and everyone powerless to stop it, each fulfilling his destiny. The irony cup runneth over, is what I'm saying.

The other big difference is the book is not just about the Mondavis; it's about wine-making history in Napa (and, though to a lesser extent, the history of wine-making in California and the United States) and about the wine industry, and what's been called the globalization of wine, and about the conflicting goals of making great wine vs. making more money than the GNP of [pick a small country]. Being so rich that your wife gives you llamas for your birthday (one assumes because you already have everything else in the world you might want).

What shocked me is how many millions of cases the big-name producers--like Mondavi--sell. Millions of cases. When you consider that a lot of small wineries get their start with making just a few hundred or a few thousand cases in a year.

One of the wines for which Mondavi is famous is Opus One, a collaboration between the Rothschild wine dynasty and the Mondavis. Recently, I tried Opus One. No, I did not buy a bottle, as it is out of my budget. I was able to pay for a one-ounce pour at one of those wine bars where you pay by the ounce. That one ounce cost a lot. I wish I'd taken notes, because all I remember now was that I thought it was good, but also that I've had a $30 bottle here and there that I've enjoyed just as much. Because I am a philistine.

Not just a philistine, I am a bit of a socialist. I look at the Mondavis with their multi-million dollar houses and their llamas and emus and chauffered limousines and all the memorials they have built to honor themselves, and then I look at all the little wineries, wineries where you find the owner pouring at the tasting bar on a Sunday, for example, or wineries that are experimenting with biodynamic farming, and I think to myself, I would rather buy my wines from those hundred-case and thousand-case lots. Not that I begrudge the Mondavis their big money. They did all seem to work very hard for it, and it came with sacrifices that I would be unwilling to make.

There are so many terrific wines that are sold only at the wineries or through wine clubs, and I know enough to understand there must be a slew of reasons. (I am starting to understand that there are lots of complicated regulations governing the selling and shipping and distributing of the vin. There are probably other reasons, too. Small wineries may not be able to afford giving a cut of their profits to distributors. More research is clearly in order.) But, still, I am thinking that even if it be a little less convenient to buy those wines, I'm willing to go through those inconveniences or pay a little more for shipping.

P.S. You understand I think the philanthropy is as it should be, but wouldn't it be refreshing if some millionaire donated a pile of cash without a building getting named after him?

UPDATE: I finished the book. You may already know there was a takeover and the Mondavis were toppled. They got a lot of money, but they all regretted having gone public in the first place. Then Robert Mondavi died last year.