St. Helena sisters Angelina and Riana Mondavi prepare for winegrape harvest
By Dave Stoneberg
ST. HELENA, Calif. — For two of the four Mondavi sisters, Angelina and Riana, early to mid-August is a time to prepare, waiting for the busiest of all seasons, Napa Valley’s wine-grape harvest.
Daughters of Marc and Janice Mondavi, they are part owners of the historic Charles Krug Winery. They are working full time at the St. Helena winery, which has been owned by the Mondavis since the women’s great-grandfather, Cesare, bought it in 1943.
Co-proprietors are brothers Peter Mondavi Jr. and Marc Mondavi, who represent the third generation. Their offspring are the fourth generation, or G4, and all are owners. Five of the six are women. Marc and Janice’s daughters include Angelina, 41; Alycia, 38; Riana, 36; and Giovanna, who is 31. Peter and Katie’s children are Lucio, 29, and Lia, 27. Riana is the only G4 member who is married. She and her husband have a son, 2 ½, who represents the fifth generation.
Riana studied marketing and international business at Villanova University, and after graduating in 2009 she headed for Miami, where she gained experience in wine and liquor sales for Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits for a couple of years. Then she headed home, and for about a dozen years she was the only full-time fourth-generation employee, working on the wholesale and distribution side.
“Only recently I moved into the hospitality niche, training in all things hospitality, between the wine club, the tasting room and events – all sorts of fun things that happen on the property here,” she said. Her title is brand ambassador and director of chains for Charles Krug.
Like all G4 members, Angelina spent her childhood summers working in the winery’s lab, starting at age 10.
“I did a little bit of sales,” she said, “but I really gravitated toward the science and understanding the chemistry behind winemaking.”
Her current role is consulting winemaker for all of the family’s wines.
“I would love to say it is the lull before the storm of harvest,” Angelina said, “but we are frantically bottling, so I am very, very happy that harvest is on a more normal trajectory. It is not so premature as it was last year, so I was able to bottle without having fruit coming in. We just finalized the blends, and we are filtering everything.”
Currently crews are bottling their flagship wine, the 2021 Vintage Selection Cabernet Sauvignon, the Napa Valley and Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignons and some of the family’s smaller wines.
“We’re getting it done and dusted,” Angelina said. “It will be nice to get it all in bottle. That’s always a goal.”
In the family’s 850 acres of vineyards, Angelina said she is starting to see some veraison, while other grape clusters are a little behind in turning color and ripening.
“Fear not, the perfect weather we’re having right now is definitely helping speed that (ripening) along,” she said. “I’m expecting we’re going to have a more normal time of harvest.”
She said current projections are that harvest will start in mid-September and end four to six weeks later.
From Riana: “So we are gearing up for harvest in a very different sense. Obviously it’s no secret that harvest is the busiest time of the year for visitation here in the Napa Valley. Here in the tasting room we are currently hiring staff, working through any kinks in the system with policies and procedures to make sure we’re ready to go when the onslaught of tourists really starts coming in.”
So far tourists have been a light trickle into the tasting room, she said, but visitation has been picking up through the summer months. Historically September and October are the two biggest months of the year for visitors, and Riana anticipates the same this year.
What’s a new normal?
When asked if visitation in 2022 was more normal than in 2020 and early ’21 – the two COVID-19 years – Riana said it was a hard question to answer.
“I feel like everybody has a different opinion on what normal is these days because we’ve gone through so many years of unprecedented times,” she said.
Being bombarded each year with something different has made it hard to define normal, she said.
“I will say that we are seeing numbers today that are matching closer to 2019 than in previous years,” she added.
Surprisingly, in February 2021, after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available and everything began opening up, visitation at Charles Krug was huge.
“It was one of the busiest Februaries that the hospitality team has seen in history,” Riana said. “Everybody was so excited to finally be able to get out of their house and to travel safely, and that continued for a little bit.”
Visitation in 2022 increased, although the hospitality staff “still felt there were a lot of people who said it was their first time traveling since 2019 or 2020,” she added.
When the sisters were growing up the family rule was that during the summers G4 members were expected to work at Charles Krug. Their first job was in the laboratory, cleaning dishes and setting up tasting stations for Peter Sr., Peter Jr., Marc and the winemakers. Eventually other jobs included taking samples from barrels and tanks and doing lab analysis.
“By the time each of us were 14 or 15 years old, we were even training the interns brought in for the harvest,” Riana said.
But by that time Riana realized “that’s not where I wanted to work. It didn’t stick with me, it didn’t speak to me.”
So when she was 16 she got a full-time job in the Spice Islands Marketplace at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. She worked five days a week during the summer and said it was during this time that her plans became solidified.
“I like being out and about, like being with people and exploring,” Riana said. “At the time I didn’t think I was geared toward sales, but over the years I realized that was what connected me to the industry.”
Angelina, however, preferred being in the lab, having been taught by her grandfather, Peter Sr., and her father, Marc.
“I fell in love with the science of winemaking,” she said. “I loved learning and setting up the tastings. Once the tastings were done, Grandpa would let me actually taste through the wines and discuss them with him to help me understand the science behind it and how it coincided with the wines we were tasting.”
She graduated from Villanova University with a major in chemistry and a minor in business. After working a few harvests as an intern, both in California and Australia, she ended up earning a master’s degree in enology from the University of Adelaide in South Australia. This year is her 30th harvest.
In the vineyard
Angelina said this year’s winegrape crop is normal or slightly below, “which makes me really, really excited because last year we had a very, very small crop, especially for whites because the drought put a damper on crop size.”
Additionally, she said the berries are strong, the clusters are loose and the vines are well-balanced in Krug’s vineyards between Yountville, St. Helena and on Howell Mountain. Walking through the vineyards, Angelina is seeing grapes going through veraison.
“Right now the flavors are starting to develop nicely because of this beautiful weather,” she said.
Recently Angelina has been out in the market, selling the family’s wines and being a part of wine dinners. She has tasted Charles Krug wines with customers, and she said it’s awesome to see their faces light up.
“We just got 93 points from Wine Enthusiast for our 2019 Napa cab,” which is listed at $41 on their website. “That’s what my family is so good at doing — getting a bang for the buck. We farmed the vineyards in the 1940s and ’50s and purchased them in the ’60s and ’70s. Having that ability with 850 acres, it allows us to have complete autonomy, so I can focus with my winemaking team, allowing us to make the best wines we can from the vineyards that we own,” Angelina said.
With the Napa Valley’s hundreds of wineries and brands, it may be tough to stand out in the marketplace, but not for the Mondavi family, led by the sons of the late Peter Mondavi Sr.
“Our biggest thing here is authenticity,” Riana said. “We truly have a story that is close to our hearts. It is our family, our legacy, our traditions that we’re keeping going, not just today but we want to keep this going for future generations.”
Cesare and Rosa Mondavi bought the inactive Charles Krug Winery in 1943 from James Moffitt, who had owned it for 49 years. The winery, under the leadership of Cesare and Rosa’s sons, Robert and Peter Mondavi, produced their first vintage a year later.
“People are taken aback when we share that this is our 80th anniversary of owning the winery,” Riana said. “On top of that, it is the oldest winery in the Napa Valley. We’ve got two pieces of history … that are really special, and I can confidently say there is no one else who can tell both of those stories.”
After Charles Krug’s death in 1892 at age 67, the winery was sold to Moffitt, a San Francisco banker and Krug’s friend. The winery was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
According to a plaque dedicated in 2003, Charles Krug was a Prussian immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in 1852 at age 27. He made wine for others in both Sonoma and Napa counties and married Carolina Bale in 1860. The following year he opened his winery just north of St. Helena. The plaque calls him a “founding father of the pioneer Napa Valley wine industry.” His innovations in making wine included using a cider press to crush the grapes, planting insect-resistant rootstock and establishing the first public tasting room.
Changes and going forward
For nearly all of its history, Charles Krug Winery has been owned by men. There are two exceptions: after Cesare’s death in 1959, when Rosa oversaw the winery, and today, when it is owned by a majority of women.
When she was pregnant with her son, Riana learned about California’s 12-week unpaid maternity leave policy.
“The old standard was if the state supports it, that’s what you get,” she said.
Riana questioned that policy and started a conversation, telling her bosses that more women of child-bearing age are working in wineries, including at Charles Krug, than ever before. As a result of the conversations, including those with the winery’s human resources personnel, the policy was changed. Maternity leave is now full pay for eight weeks.
“It was a huge win that we were able to do that,” she said. “Even though we’re the old guy on the block, we’re trying our best to stay at the forefront of what we do, what we offer, how we make our wines and how we support our employees.”
Riana, her husband and her young son live on the winery property. She said she’s fortunate to raise her son there.
“He loves being able to have the same childhood that we had,” she said, “living at the winery and being able to wander around the tasting room, the vineyards and the cellars.”
A year ago, when Angelina was named consulting winemaker, both Peter Jr. and Marc had something to say, according to a news release at that time.
First Peter Jr.: “I am proud to see a fourth-generation member step into a winemaking role as succession planning is important for continuing our family business. Angelina will be a critical part of our winemaking team at Charles Krug Winery and important to the future of our family legacy.”
Next up is Angelina’s dad, Marc: “For the past nine decades, we’ve had a family member direct winemaking at Charles Krug. It’s great to see the fourth generation integrate and take a leadership position of the future winemaking for the family. I’m so proud of the wines Angelina makes and am thrilled she is joining the winemaking team as a consulting winemaker of Charles Krug Winery.”
Dave Stoneberg is an editor and journalist who has worked at newspapers in both Napa and Lake counties.
Thank you for keeping wonderful tradition at Charles Krug Winery.