Robert Mondavi visited Melbourne recently as part of a national tour to promote his wine and to spread the word that the American anti-alcohol lobby is lining up its guns straight at the wine industry there. “I doubt very much that we will sell enough of our wine here to justify this trip in that way, but we regard Australia as a major long-term market for our wine.” “We want to show Australians that we are making wine to go with food. Over-processed wines, as we once used to make, have no heart and soul, so we now interfere with the winemaking process as little as possible. The results are a more complex wine, with elegance and restraint – which allow them to marry with the flavours of food more easily. Food has become more important to me over the last few years.” Mondavi believes that Australian wine-drinkers are accustomed to big, rich wines, which Australia can make very well. “But now you are beginning to look for more elegance and lightness, as we did around ten years ago. We’re working on the segment of the public that appreciates the marriage of restrained wine with food. We want to be in the restaurants.” And what of the anti-alcohol feeling in his native USA? “Our main problem is `Proposition 65′”, he says, which is connected with an American bill to ensure the purity of its water. “The Government has shown that ethanol is a carcenogenic by giving rats or hampsters doses of a thousand times the usual level (of ethanol) taken by people. Of course it’s going to be carcenogenic at that degree – I could have told them that. The fact is that by drinking a normal and responsible amount, it can be demonstrated that wine is beneficial to the health of humans. Non-wine drinkers have more cholesterol, have more heart attacks and die sooner.” The same thing could happen here. “Wine is the one thing that feeds the body, soul and spirit of man”, proclaims Californian wine godfather, Robert Mondavi. “Wine stimulates the human being. I’m not supposed to say it’s healthy…the devil…It’s good for you!”
