You know, I was farming all weekend, and every time I would step out into the vineyard we would be reliving the experiences of having known Robert Mondavi. (
http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/f...Bio%202008.pdf) Beyond the Robert that everybody sees that was in public, that will always be in public, there was a Robert that really cared. Not that he didn’t care in public – of course he did. But he had individual relationships with hundreds and hundreds of people – people to whom he was an integral part of their lives. I remember the Saturday morning after he passed away, I woke up at 6 a.m., with the sun coming up and a meditation of Robert on my mind. I remember when I opened Tra Vigne (
http://www.travignerestaurant.com/) , during the first week it was open Robert walked in and he walked right behind the line of the kitchen. Which, if you’ve never been behind the line of a professional kitchen, is something that you don’t do. And he walked in not because he was being pompous, but because he cared about risotto so much, and he thought that I cooked the risotto just 45 seconds too far and he was going to let me know what that tasted like. So he came in to watch some risotto go out to help me see that I wasn’t necessarily sending out of the kitchen right, but by the time the customer ate it at the table it was maybe overcooked a little bit, and maybe I should pull it back a couple of minutes. So he stayed in the kitchen for like an hour, not saying anything – just putting a spoon into the risotto and then going out to the table and standing next to the table and asking them to wait a few seconds before they ate it and then he would try it and tell me if we had it right. So he cared so much about the Napa Valley in general. People call him a selfless promoter, but he was a promoter of the good life outside the Mondavi Winery (
http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/) . He was a promoter of heart health and red wine. I think we’d be ten years behind where we are now if not more, it wasn’t for his work. He was the little engine that could – small in stature, but huge in personality. You know, I had a chance to travel around the world with the Mondavi Winery (
http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/) , and Tim and Michael Mondavi, and even in Shanghai his legend was out in front. So I would go out and cook with Mondavi Winery at the peninsula in Shanghai, in Hong Kong, Bangkok. Always with Mondavi, always way ahead - in China in 1992, tastings of red wine, knowing it was a big market, knowing that he had to get the story out and the wine into people’s mouths. And they would bring me – they would hire me to go with them, and promote me at the same time. So they were constantly promoting the Napa Valley, all that’s good in the Napa Valley. So his legacy lives inside hundreds of people whose lives he’s touched. The people who have worked with him have a loyalty that you don’t often see. His most loyal are as loyal as they come on the planet. Greatly missed, but a celebrated life of 94 years – I can’t help but smile just knowing that 93.5 out of a life of 94 years were rockin’. And he didn’t even start the Mondavi Winery (
http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/) till he was 50. Imagine if he had started when he was 20. So it was a good run.
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