Peter Mondavi Jr. addresses Wine Industry

The 18th Annual Wine Industry Financial Symposium, September 15, 2009
FAMILY, RELATIONSHIPS AND INNOVATION
Peter Mondavi, Jr., Proprietor, Charles Krug

My family's story begins, at least in the United States, on December 20th, 1908. That was the day my grandparents, Cesare & Rosa, landed on Ellis Island with little more than a partial elementary school education and $80 dollars on their person. But what they lacked in worldly possessions was made up in spades by their ambition and character.

Their first stop was Northern Minnesota, where my grandfather struggled in an iron mine until he managed to buy a saloon and my grandmother ran a boarding house for 15 Italian iron mine laborers.

Prohibition changed the business overnight from a saloon to a grocery store and then, as fate would have it, to shipping and selling California wine grapes through the store for the production of homemade wine by the local Italian immigrants. Three years, or vintages, was enough to convince the family, now encompassing four children, to move to California. Read the entire speech.