Q&A with Julia Flynn Siler, author, The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty.

The interview took place on Thursday, June 7 in Yountville.

How did you initially get interested in the Mondavis?

It started in January of 2004. There was a story buried in the San Francisco Chronicle saying Michael Mondavi was taking a leave of absence and the deputy bureau chief of the Chronicle and I went to lunch and we were talking and he said it was odd that [Michael] would do that. So I started thinking about it and called over to the company and really hit a brick wall. It was so odd that at a company that had been so open for years and years, no one would talk to me. Mondavi was famous for having many, many friends amongst reporters, he was very open. That was the charm and integral part of the culture. The response I got raised a red flag and made me think, what's happened?

How did you start getting information if they wouldn't talk to you?

It was a publicly traded company so there were a lot of SEC filings and documents. Mondavi has the nickname Mondavi University because so many talented people came through there and therefore there were former employees and they were pretty easy to talk to. The wine industry is gracious and open and it wasn't hard to track down a whole bunch of people.

Had you met members of the family up to that point; you knew about the famous rift between Robert and Peter, right?

No. I really came to it cold and I think in some ways it was a good thing because I had never been on the receiving end of all that hospitality over the years, I wasn't a wine writer. I had never met a single member of the family before.

In that original WSJ story, you quoted psychiatrists that had worked with the family. What led you to that?

One of the key sources I ran across was Peter Ventura who had been the CEO of Opus One and is Robert Mondavi's nephew and cousin to Michael and Timothy. Peter at that point was no longer CEO of Opus One, he had just left I think. He was really the first member of the family to open up to me and that led to a family counselor and long-time lawyer for the family named Cliff Adams, Robert's self-described consigliore. He had been with Robert from the 1960s through the 90s, had taken them through the IPO.

Both of those men had a pretty good sense of the family dynamic - one was a family member; one had worked with the dynamics of the family for decades.

What was happening?

What was happening in the spring of 2004 was Ted Hall had come in as the outside chairman, Michael had been ousted, which was humiliating for him, Tim had been sidelined as vice chairman and it looked as though the board was going to strip the Mondavis of their control of the company, so it was a terribly, terribly stressful time for them and for the company as a whole. A lot of people were being laid off.

What also had changed is when Ted Hall became the outside chairman he had retained a very well known financial PR company based in new York and I think that company probably said don't talk to anybody, especially don't talk to Julie. But the fact that they had been so open for so many years made my job easier.

The WSJ story runs, then what happened?

The key thing was the story foreshadowed the fact the company might be sold or broken up. It's a publicly traded company; the stock is going to react to that. It came out two, three days before the Napa Valley Auction, so clearly that added to the pressure the family and the company was already feeling. But that's my job, I'm a financial reporter. I was at that auction and it was for me awkward. My intention certainly was not to hurt anybody but just very clearly lay out what was going on inside the company.

Did you formally meet the Mondavis there?

I went up to Mr. Mondavi and introduced myself and shook his hand and told him I had a lot of respect for him. I think I introduced myself to Margrit, I introduced myself to Tim. Michael was not there as I recall. For me it was a bit like being an anthropologist, this world of the Napa Valley Wine Auction is foreign and exotic to most people. It's beyond their dreams that level of money being devoted to fermented grape juice, so it was fascinating. I know I was an outsider, I know I was perceived as being perhaps someone with a critical eye looking at this, which isn't the norm in the wine industry.

In meeting them in person was anything surprising?

Mr. Mondavi at that point was slowing down and it wasn't clear how aware he was of what was happening so I was surprised by that because as a reporter from the outside there was no indication whatsoever that there was any kind of mental confusion. I knew he had a hearing problem. Margrit was absolutely gracious and it was clear to me at that auction that she was highly regarded and beloved in the community and rightly so, she's a very beautiful, gracious lady and has been extraordinarily generous.

[Tim] seemed very protective of his dad. Knowing what I know now I realize it was an extraordinarily difficult few months for them. I believe there had been a key board meeting either just before the auction or just about to happen in New York which was the key step in their losing control of their company. I can only imagine what they must have been feeling. I don't know what they were feeling and I don't pretend to know unless they told me. The prologue of my book is that auction, that day. Robert rode a golf cart into the auction because he was having trouble walking and then Tim helped him up to the podium.

At what point did you decide to turn their saga into a book?

I received an email from the publisher at Penguin right after the WSJ story ran saying would you consider a book and so I went to the auction knowing that this could be the first chapter of this book and also knowing that something was happening - there was a lot of board room maneuvering going on right then - so I was there as a reporter.

So the book starts from that point on?

No, the book really starts in 1906 when Cesare [Mondavi] comes from Italy and it spans almost 100 years. The first scene takes place at that 2004 auction because that was one of the most difficult moments for the Robert Mondavi family and took place at an auction they helped found, a symbol of their generosity and their giving to the community for so many years, yet at that moment they were on the verge of losing control of their company - I shouldn't say their company because it was a publicly traded company, a company they founded.

How did you do a lot of the historic research, did the family help?

The wine industry is blessed because there is first of all a really wonderful oral history program at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, there were oral histories of Robert, of Peter, oral histories of a number of winemakers they worked with over the years, Grgich, Winiarski, some of the vintners and winemakers who were even of an earlier generation are in those oral histories. That was a great place to start.

Luckily the St. Helena Wine Library had a lot of stuff. So there was a lot of interesting material out there already. My job as an author is so much easier than somebody who would have tried to do this project 10 or 20 years ago. For example the Ellis Island Foundation, I could get the actual passenger records from the steamer that Cesare Mondavi took over from Italy to the U.S. and you can see his name, it's really remarkable.

And there were family members who shared a lot of photographs which I'm very grateful for. By the end of this project we talked to more than 250 people all over the world. I went to Italy, I went to Sassoferroto [where Cesare was born]. I spoke to the Frescobaldi family and the Antinori family, interviewed the Baroness Rothschild here and I traveled to Fairport, New York where Richard and Robert Sands [of Constellation] run their wine empire, went into the war room which is the place where they strategized the takeover of Mondavi.

Was there a consensus of the people you spoke to on Mondavi's lasting legacy in the wine world? Is his place in history secure?

His legacy as a tireless pitchman for the Napa Valley, California and the American wine industry is secure, I think it makes no difference that Constellation bought the company he founded. I don't think my book will in any way hurt that legacy I think it will deepen people's understanding of what it took to do what he did, which took a pretty focused, driven personality.

What are some of your favorite anecdotes?

Warren Winiarski was really, really helpful, I went back to him on several occasions, Warren having sort of a professorial view and a very deep knowledge of literature he was helpful in thinking about the battle from literature that might apply. It did resemble King Lear and Warren helped me think it through. As I drove between San Francisco and Napa I listened to a recording of King Lear two or three times to think about it.

Of course King Lear was about an aging king who's dividing his kingdom and his succession issue and his inheritance issues and there are a lot of ways in which what happened to Robert Mondavi can be likened to what happened to King Lear even down to King Lear at the end is mad, Robert Mondavi never went mad but he did suffer from severe mental confusion at times toward the end of my book, which ends in 2005.

One of my absolute favorite stories, and the woman who told me the story has since passed away; she was a French designer and party planner and worked for the Robert Mondavi Winery for a long, long time, worked closely with Margrit. In its heyday the winery used to throw these hard to believe parties, one of my favorite stories from [her] was an Out of Africa party shortly after that movie came out. They shipped in animals, an elephant, cheetah, maybe a lion and even chimpanzees to this big party they were throwing for distributors.

The chimps were pooping and they were worried the chimps were going to poop on the guests so they ended up having to put diapers on the chimpanzees. I have this wonderful picture someone else shared with me of Robert and Margrit and they were feeding champagne to the elephant. They had a lot of fun. People really loved working there.

I think Michael told me a hysterical story about Robert, who was a notoriously speedy driver and well known to the CHP for driving so fast and the story I heard was that Michael got pulled over and the cop said look I'm going to let you off with a warning but make me one promise, promise me that your dad doesn't drive anymore, get him a driver. Speaks to the pace at which he lived his life, which is pretty fast.

So you spoke with Michael?

I spoke with Michael extensively, I spoke with Tim on a number of occasions, it was particularly hard on Tim I think. I spoke with Margrit at least a half a dozen times and I fact checked with all of them. I spoke with [Robert's daughter] Marcy maybe three times in total on the telephone very briefly. I'm not sure I would call those interviews. According to Harvey Posert, I got the last interview with Robert that he gave to anybody and that was in March of 2005. But at that point Robert was not tracking, I didn't use anything from that interview, it didn't seem like the right thing to do.

Do you see a universal appeal for this book because of the family drama or do you think enough people know Mondavi as a wine name that that will draw them in?

I think anybody who's interested in a family saga will be interested in this book. And it's remarkable and it's inspiring too how they created an enterprise that was valued at more than $1 billion over the course of 40 years. There's an enormous number of family businesses in this country and they're very productive but they also carry with them special challenges.

Typically people don't write about family businesses very much because they're so hard to penetrate, to get inside and particularly if you talk about the emotions which I find underlay so many of the dynamics. When you mix work and family into this, it's a lot more challenging. Harvard Business School has written something like five or six case studies on the Mondavi family. I particularly am fascinated with real stories of families and how they work.

Seems that right now there are so many families in Napa and Sonoma grappling with family succession issues because where we are in the history of the wine industry. Do you think there is something specific for them to learn from the Mondavi story?

One clear lesson is that between 1993 when the Mondavis took their company public and 2004, 11 years later, the world had really dramatically changed - with Sarbanes Oxley and with much heavier reporting requirements that that brought about, no one could have anticipated that but looking back on it - but particularly in the wine industry which is so subject to the vagaries of agriculture I think wine companies considering going public should think long and hard about it. It's tough, tough business. That's a lesson that the vast majority of family wineries are not even going to contemplate going public but there is consolidation going on.

A larger issue and a more universal one that might speak not only to wine families but anybody in family business is this notion of a shared dream. Robert had a very clear vision of where he wanted the company to go and how to get there and I think he hoped that somehow his sons would be able to carry that on.

It's pretty clear just from my own perspective that it may have been that wasn't the wisest course and it may have been a better idea to follow the pattern of some of the European wine families at some stage say okay let's step back, we are owners but we're going to let other people manage the business. And as owners we are going to come up with instruction and vote as a bloc and exercise our control as a bloc and the Mondavis never had that kind of agreement amongst themselves to vote as a bloc, which is very unusual and only explained through understanding a very long history that involves a lot of disagreements and a lot of hurt.

This is a story in a sense of a legacy of divorce, too. [Robert's] divorce [from first wife Margie] was very, very painful for Robert's adult children and to this day Michael makes no secret of the fact that he's not exactly Margrit's biggest fan.

Did you get to taste a lot of Mondavi wines throughout your research?

I tasted some, I like Mondavi wines I think they're delicious. One of the things that I was able to do before I wrote the WSJ story was take a tour of Mondavi winery and taste a lot of wines and also over the last couple of years every chance I could get so I could better understand what I was writing about. Particularly right now [Mondavi ] Genevieve [Janssens]'s wines are underrated. They're very good.

Is there anybody like them anymore in terms of the Mondavi University aspect of constant research and innovation?

I know Jess Jackson's hired a lot of very talented former Mondavi people. He seems to have a great eye for talent but it's not clear to me he wants to step into the role that Robert had and not clear there's anyone in the Gallo family yet ready to do that. I don't know. The world is such a different place too. How many wineries are there now in Napa, 300 or 400? It's hard(er) to break out.

Were there things that you kept out of the book because they were too personal?

I was a stranger coming into Napa Valley, I'd written a fairly tough story about a beloved icon that people were upset about yet so many people talked to me and they talked to me because they trusted I would do the right thing. Almost everybody I talked to was on the record but there was an instance of a woman, a former employee of the winery who spoke only on background.

She helped me understand some of the things I'd heard from women in the valley. Robert was a person who loved women and that was a very delicate thing to deal with and I ended up having to talk to Margrit about how she coped with being married to a man who so clearly loved women, loved to be touched by women. Some of what Robert Mondavi might have considered good fun could probably be considered inappropriate and certainly some women I talked to felt that way. I did not focus on that in the book. Margrit felt that she handled it very graciously.

What was [early Mondavi winemaker] Zelma Long's take, she was there so early, a woman winemaker given that position, she must have been one of the first.

She was given a fantastic opportunity. The other side of Robert loving women, he was also one of the first to give women opportunities like Zelma Long and a succession of very talented women after that. She told me wonderful stories of going to Europe with Robert and Margrit to understand how European winemakers were doing it and the sheer energy and exuberance, the funny things that happened, a bus got lost and Margrit was able to translate and ask directions in three or four different languages.

Margrit was a wonderful asset to Robert in so many ways and Zelma also had deep insight into the dynamics of Robert and his sons because Zelma was there when Tim was just about to become winemaker and Robert was tough on his sons, extremely tough on them and he would make Tim in particular cry. That's a terrible position to be in as the boss's son. Zelma remembers stories like that.

Is Mondavi the most famous wine name in America? What about outside of America?

Gallo is a pretty famous name. But Mondavi was a pioneer in having partnerships with the Rothschilds, Frescobaldis, with wineries in Australia. Credit is due to Robert for that. He is remarkable, I wish I had known him, met him in the 1990s when he was still at his peak.

How much did the James Conaway book [The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley, published in 2002] hurt you?

Oh it hurt a lot because there were a lot of people who were very wary of talking to a reporter after Jim's book. In this case every single principal I went back to and fact checked, I don't think they are going to be surprised by anything although particularly in a situation like this in 2004 and 2005 things were so emotionally charged that looking back on it now as they begin to reinvent themselves, they probably wish they had let a lot of that go.

Is there a movie in this?

I don't know. I know that one of the investment bankers for Constellation joked that this is a real life Falcon Crest and there are elements of a soap opera or family epic, the Thornbirds, but they're real people and whose story is it? I tried to be a very straight, WSJ-style writer in approaching this. If they didn't say it I didn't make it up. If I couldn't find out what they said I didn't' put it in the book. The people who started this industry are strong people, they're remarkable and if you look closely at people who are pioneers or very driven entrepreneurs there's some pain behind that drive and certainly that was the case with Robert Mondavi.

Do you think you would have gotten that call if this was about textiles or semiconductors?

No, wine is so glamorous, the glamour, the romance of wine, the Napa Valley. It's aspiration, people want to imagine. Robert Mondavi of course had been on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, he and Margrit had built their house on Wappo Hill and Robin Leach had a helicopter circling above his estate. There was a lot of glamour associated with his lifestyle and the wine. He was so handsome.