![]() You can read all about it in remarkably detailed articles in the New York Times, or in the unputdownable The House of Mondavi by Julia Flyn Siler. Not only that, but Mondavi in 1978 settled the legal dispute with his brother. Plenty of French winemakers were disgusted at the result, but the smart ones wanted to find out more. The 1976 Judgement of Paris, when Californian wines roundly beat the French (including the 1970 vintage of Mouton Rothschild) in a blind tasting had increased interest in the Napa Valley. Baron Philippe had renewed energy after Mouton’s promotion, and by this point the economic precipice brought about by the Oil Crisis of the 1970s had receded for both men. But the relationship had been formed between the aristocratic Baron who was the 4th generation of his family at a centuries-old château and the 1st generation American wine visionary who had built his company from nothing.īy 1978, everything had changed. It meant that a shared winemaking project would be put on the backburner until 1978. It would keep him fully occupied until June 23, 1973, when Mouton finally joined Lafite Rothschild, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Latour as First Growths of Bordeaux, 118 years after the 1855 classification*. The battle had taken him much of the previous 20 years – started in earnest in 1952 and reaching its end game by the early 1970s. ![]() Rothschild meanwhile was busy fighting for Château Mouton Rothschild to be promoted to 1855 First Growth. Napa Valley was starting to draw the attention of an international crowd, but Mondavi was still in the throws of a bitter fallout with his brother Peter a fight that would almost bankrupt him. ![]() Apparently suggested by the baron, it turned out to be premature. They hadn’t met before, but they knew each other by reputation – Mondavi as the first man to have built a major new winery in Napa since Prohibition, and Philippe de Rothschild as the racing-car-driving playboy baron who was battling to have his Mouton Rothschild estate promoted to First Growth Bordeaux (a feat he would achieve three years later).Īt some point over the few days they spent there during a wine and spirits industry convention – not too much of a stretch to imagine it was over a few glasses of wine in the hotel’s handsome bar rather than at a corporate stand – the idea was raised of their making a wine together. It was, suitably enough, the setting for the first meeting between Baron Philippe and Robert Mondavi in 1970, five years after the hotel opening. And then there’s the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, set on Kauna’oa Bay on Hawaii’s Big Island.īuilt by Laurance S Rockfeller, it was the most expensive hotel construction to date by the time of the ribbon-cutting ceremony in July 1965, and quickly attracted a host of celebrity guests to the lava-strewn shores of Hawaii’s west coast. ![]() There’s Hasselager Manor in Denmark, the oldest Renaissance building in the country where he liked to travel to meet friends. There’s the island of Ischia, where he escaped for a distraction in June 1973 while waiting to hear if Mouton Rothschild had been promoted to First Growth. There should be a niche travel company created mirroring Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s holiday choices. With thanks to Christopher Barefoot of Opus for sharing his memories.
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