Calif. wine patriarch Robert Mondavi dies at 94

"He had an amazing life," said Robert C. Koch, president and CEO of the San Francisco-based Wine Institute. "He was a major driving force and an incredible promoter for California wine and the Napa Valley."

Born in Virginia, Minn., Mondavi got an economics degree from Stanford University in the 1930s and went to work at the Charles Krug Winery, which his Italian-born parents had bought after moving to California from Minnesota.

He married his high school sweetheart, Marjorie Declusin, in 1937, and they had three children, Michael, Marcia and Tim.

For 20 years, the winery was a family business. But Robert clashed frequently with his younger brother, Peter, who had a more conservative approach the business. According to Robert Mondavi's autobiography "Harvests of Joy," matters came to a head with a November 1965 fistfight.

"When it was all over, there were no apologies and no handshake," wrote Robert Mondavi.

In the late 1970s, Mondavi's first marriage ended; in his autobiography he wrote that his single-minded pursuit of the wine business was partly to blame. In 1980, he married a second time, to Margrit Biever, a native of Switzerland who had worked at the Mondavi winery since the late '60s.

By the mid-1990s, Mondavi had turned over operation of the company to his sons. But like their father and uncle before them, Tim and Michael clashed over management styles.

More troubles emerged as a grape glut soured the wine market in 2002 and lower-priced wines in the Mondavi portfolio faced tough competition from cheaper Australian imports and domestic brands like California's Two Buck Chuck.

Also a problem were the millions in charitable donations Mondavi and Margrit had pledged, including helping found Copia, The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, in Napa and giving $35 million to the University of California, Davis.

In her 2007 book, "The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty," author Julia Flynn Siler wrote that declining stock prices later left Mondavi in danger of not being able to cover the millions in gifts he and Margrit had promised.