Defending Mondavi and the Worst Kind of Liberal Elite
The worst kind of the liberal elite in wine media are those that use their keystrokes as wannabe Lenin communists under the cloak of quality.
As the playwright said, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” but most times the sharp edge of the writing (or cutting) device should be well protected in the sheath of defensible opinion.
Simply, basing opinion with substantive context and a smattering of fact always engenders people to the writer’s opinion.
As any storyteller will tell you, detail makes the story both interesting and credible.
Unfortunately, however, for some mainstream media, notably Paul Gregutt, wine writer for the Seattle Times newspaper, he didn’t get the memo.
I’ll give Gregutt, a writer and author of some merit, a bit of the benefit of the doubt because his column is a scant 615 words, about the length of a decent blog post, and certainly not long enough for a think piece on the state of Robert Mondavi winery, but his column sets up with an agenda that really reads like a grinding axe, hardly reason to extend much grace.
Now, mind you, I am no Mondavi apologist, nor mouthpiece. However, I do have an affinity for the man, I have enjoyed my visits to the winery and, for the most part, I’ve found the wines to be consistently well-crafted, of high quality with a quality to price ratio that is usually spot-on.
Gregutt’s column reeks of the same kind of liberal elitism that permeates mainstream business media. In the mainstream business press, the so-called liberal elite champion the underdog allowing big business to play the evil foil.
Played out in the wine press, it is the same story with a different protagonist—small wineries are our heroes with corporate wineries playing the role of spoiler.
Ah, it makes good copy if it were not a threadbare angle and about as tired of a writer’s device as exists.
In his Seattle Times column Gregutt primarily laments the expansion of the Mondavi wine line-up under the ownership of Constellation (a fact that did not start with Constellation and actually was one of the well-chronicled divisive differences between Tim and Michael Mondavi as growth tugged at the company). Juxtaposing a 1969 Cabernet he enjoyed for a recent birthday, Gregutt sets the table for a “then and now” piece using the President of Constellation, José Fernandez, and his phrase “premiumization” against the company.
And, of course, Gregutt references Constellation and their spot on the Wine Business Monthly (WBM) Top 30 wine companies (#3); this is well and good, if not disingenuous.
Instead of using their position on the list of large wine companies as a Scarlet Letter, as Gregutt does, for balance, it would be nice if he encouraged all wine lovers to read the WBM annual report on the Top 30 wines companies. 95% of those that consider themselves fans of wine will be surprised at how much wine is produced from these large companies (who act more as holding companies for individual businesses than an evil conglomerate), and, by and large, there is nothing wrong with this scope in size – most of these companies keep the brands or the wineries largely autonomous and quality minded, and even the biggest wine company is still a pimple on the ass, in terms of size, of most corporations.
Big in wine terms, isn’t really big. In addition, big can mean consistent—as in consistently keeping key members of staff by paying them competively and giving them tools to expand their interest and expertise.
To wit, Mondavi’s Director of Winemaking, Genevieve Janssens, has been in her post since 1997, by virtue of that, Gregutt’s premise of his column, to revisit Mondavi under the stewardship of Constellation, is largely a canard to present a pre-existing opinion.
In his reviews of wines he visits the Woodbridge line, Private Reserve wines, the Solaire line and the winery wines, with not a lot of good things to say along the way, ending his column with the following:
“My survey barely scraped the surface of the Mondavi wines. Perhaps some hidden treasures are out there; I did not find them.”
If Gregutt is serious about finding a Mondavi hidden treasure he should end, where he started. If he uses the 1969 Cabernet as his baseline for Mondavi of days past, he should visit the 2006 Robert Mondavi Winery Napa Valley Cabernet.
For about $20 he would find a stunning value in Napa Cab. – an elegant, concentrated, intense wine with fruit, earth and spice, built to age, but ready to drink. It is a superb value in quality and price and an example of the best that a so-called “corporate” winery can offer as it does its “premiumization.”
Liberal elite messaging notwithstanding, I would urge anybody looking for consistent value to not give short shrift to Robert Mondavi Winery. The man himself never gave up, bucking many setbacks along the way, and I have a hunch his namesake winery is not going to either, despite a popular wine media tide that may be against them.
What I blogged about a year ago: The $3M Question