The following year, they changed the name of both the winery and wine to Opus One, a musical term attributed to a composition considered to be a composer’s first masterpiece. A 12 bottle case of the highly anticipated Rothschild Mondavi wine called Napamedoc, a nod to the wine’s Franco American heritage, was put up for bid and sold for an unheard of $24,000. On June 21st 1981, the inaugural Napa Valley Wine Auction took place.
The goal was to produce a small annual run of single Bordeaux blend based on Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon containing small quantities of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec that would result in an uncompromising quality.Įight years later in 1978, Mondavi visited Rothschild in Bordeaux France and cemented the partnership by selling 35 acres from his To Kalon Vineyard in Oakville to their joint winery, located opposite his own self-titled winery across State Route 29in Western Oakville, to serve as the backbone for their wine.Īlthough their partnership venture wasn’t officially announced until 1980, the duo began producing wine a year before with the first vintage being created by Rothschild’s winemaker Lucien Sionneau and Mondavi’s son Timothy in 1979. Credited for reviving Bordeaux’s highest classification designation 1st growth, Rothschild and Mondavi, known for establishing Napa Valley as a location worthy of recognition by the international wine community, started developing plans for a joint winery that would merge old world and new world wine styles to create one grand opus. In 1970, two of the most recognizable titans in the wine industry, Phillipe de Rothschild of Bordeaux France and Robert Mondavi of Napa Valley California, met for the first time while randomly vacationing at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the big island of Hawaii.
Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay, Read more. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world.
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