In general Prohibition had a devastating effect on commercial winemaking in the country, which only started to recover in the late 1960s and 1970s under major industry pioneers such as Ernest and Julio Gallo, Robert Mondavi and the world-class viticultural scientists at the University of California, Davis.

Following the acquisition of Mondavi by Constellation Brands in December 2004, the Frescobaldi family has been attempting to gain full control of the Tuscan ventures.

Interest in traditional European varieties increased after Mondavi reinvented Sauvignon Blanc in a dry, heavily oaked style called Fumé Blanc, leading to the innovations that triumphed so spectacularly in Paris in 1976.

Eventually, the wine acquired the alias of " Fumé Blanc " in California by promotion of Robert Mondavi in 1968.

Mondavi decided to try to tame that aggressiveness with barrel agings and released the wine under the name Fumé Blanc as an allusion to the French Pouilly-Fumé.

In Lodi, his father, Cesare, established a successful fruit packing business under the name C. Mondavi and Sons, packing and shipping grapes to the east coast primarily for home winemaking.

* Woodbridge wine, made by Robert Mondavi ( now part of Constellation Brands )

" Nearby Woodbridge is the home of the well known winery, Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi.

This California wine was first made by Napa Valley's Robert Mondavi Winery in 1968.

In recent blind tastings organised by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, Grüner Veltliners have beaten world-class Chardonnays from the likes of Mondavi and Maison Louis Latour.

So led by winemakers such as Robert Mondavi, varietal labelling became common during the 1960s and 1970s, and has since spread to most of Eastern Europe and much of Western Europe.

It pits the ambitions of large, multinational wine producers, in particular Robert Mondavi, against the small, single estate wineries who have traditionally boasted wines with individual character driven by their terroir.

After achieving his lifelong goal with the 1973 upgrading of Chateau Mouton Rothschild to Premier Cru status, and after the historic results of the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, he began looking beyond France for wine-growing opportunities and in 1980 announced a joint venture with the respected American wine grower, Robert Mondavi, to form the Opus One Winery in Oakville, California.

* 1913 – Robert Mondavi, American winemaker ( d. 2008 )

** Robert Mondavi, American winemaker ( d. 2008 )

Mondavi grew up in Lodi, and Mondavi Winery is considered one of the most influential in the American wine industry.

Today the Lodi area is home to several large manufacturing, general services, and agricultural companies, including Archer Daniels Midland, Blue Shield of California, Dart Container ( www. dartcontainer. com /), General Mills, Holz Rubber Company, Kubota Tractors, Lodi Iron Works, Miller Packing Company, Pacific Coast Producers, Tiger Lines, Valley Industries, and Woodbridge-Robert Mondavi.

* Robert Mondavi, American wine entrepreneur.

Many well known wine brands, such as Mondavi, Carlo Rossi, Petri, Sebastiani, and Gallo emerged from these early enterprises.

In 1980, the vineyard officially announced their joint venture with Robert Mondavi to create Opus One Winery in Oakville, California.

The entrance of Robert Mondavi Winery.

Robert Gerald Mondavi ( June 18, 1913 – May 16, 2008 ) was a leading California vineyard operator whose technical improvements and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California.

From an early period, Mondavi aggressively promoted labeling wines varietally rather than generically.

The Robert Mondavi Institute ( RMI ) for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis opened October 2008 in his honor.

Robert Gerald Mondavi was born in Virginia, Minnesota.

From Minnesota the Mondavi family moved to Lodi, California, where he attended Lodi High School.

If he had married her, he'd have been asking for trouble.

They had been seen as soon as they left the ranch, picked out of the darkness by the weary though watchful eyes of two men posted a few hundred yards away in the windless shelter of the trees.

They greeted the news angrily, as though they had been cheated of purpose.

With every leaping stride of the horse beneath him he crossed one more patch of earth that had been his, that he would never see again.

He had been carrying an Enfield rifle and a holstered navy cap-and-ball pistol.

But the luck that had been running their way left him.

His shout had been taken up and repeated.

A sizable supply of powder had been touched off.

The worst part had been the waiting ; ;

The war captain had been badly wounded and was fighting to hold his seat.

And one had been too many.

That afternoon when they had pulled up in front of the broken-down ranch house, his hopes had been high.

The place had been cheap -- just the little he had left after Amelia's burial -- and it would serve its purpose.

I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.

Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

He had been worried that with Miller and Rankin added to the escape party they would be short.

He had been one of the original Night Riders, one who had escaped the trial.

He had been the auditor for the mining syndicate, and he had stolen fifty thousand dollars of the syndicate's money.

Then the vein had petered out and the whole project had been abandoned.