CK Mondavi is rather good and I agree.
Interesting history of CK Mondavi..
In the Mondavi family, you had the father, with two sons... Robert (who most will know) and Peter. They mostly grew grapes to supply to other wineries, and raised cattle.
When Robert was rather young, he approached mom and dad to purchase the Charles Krug winery, one (if not THE) oldest wineries in Nappa. The father purchased the Charles Krug winery, and he decided to have both his sons run it.
Robert and Peter tried to follow the Gallo brothers model. Robert was in charge of sales and Peter was in charge of production. The Gallo brothers had a long standing agreement that Ernest would produce as much wine as Julio could sell, and Julio would sell as much wine as Ernest could produce. Although this worked well for the Gallos, this was doomed to failure for the Mondavis.
In no time at all, intense resentment developed between the Mondavi brothers. Robert was out on trips, entertaining potential clients on a winery expense account, while Peter was stuck in the winery doing the grunt work. To make things worse, as the older brother, Robert was always micro-managing Peter's production end of things, keeping Peter on the tightest budget possible. This went on for a number of years until, one day, it all came to a head.
The way the story goes, Robert and his wife were invited to the White house to attend a state dinner thrown by the President. Since Robert lived rather cheaply, his wife really had nothing to wear to such a formal affair. As a result, Robert used expense account money to purchase a fur coat for his wife.
Robert's intent was that the money for the fur coat was a loan to be paid back out of his own pocket. Unfortunately, being the older brother, he never told Peter anything about it.
When Peter found out, Peter exploded. He called Robert a thief and claimed that Robert was stealing money from the family business. Robert took great offense to this attack on his character and a fistfight broke out right in the old CK winery. Robert won the fight with his brother, but lost the next fight. The one with the family.
The aftermath was rather surprising. The family sided with Peter. They demanded that the money be paid back immediately and also gave Peter controlling interest in CK Mondavi. As a result, Robert decided to leave CK, sell off all his stake in the company, and start the Modavi winery. The rift between Robert and the rest of his family was so complete, that Robert even changed the way that his last name was pronounced. The "a" in Mond-a-vi went from a hard "A" (as in "day") to a soft "AH" sound that most of us are familiar with.
Peter did not do well at CK. The winery tanked and they sold off the Charles Krug winery. Peter then started another winery, but wanted to build on the Charles Krug brand by naming the new winery "CK Mondavi".
OK, SO WAY MORE THEN ANYBODY WANTED TO KNOW....
To me, it is very interesting since I have had the same type of falling out with my own family. I have not seen or spoke to them in almost 7 years.
johnT.