Woodbridge By Robert Mondavi Chardonnay White Wine

Over forty years ago, Robert Mondavi set out to establish a wine culture in America by putting great California wine on every table. In 1979 he established the Woodbridge Winery near his childhood home of Lodi, California to make fruit-focused wines for everyday drinking.

In the early 1900’s, Cesare and Rosa Mondavi, newlyweds from Sassoferrato in northern Italy, settled in Minnesota. In 1919, the National Prohibition Act was passed, banning the sale of alcohol. This seemed incomprehensible to Italian families to whom wine was a staple of daily life. Luckily, a loophole in the law allowed people to make 200 gallons of wine each year for family consumption.

Cesare became involved in shipping wine grapes from California for home winemaking and noticed that the majority of the grapes were coming from a place called Lodi in California. Sensing an opportunity, he moved his family, which included a young Robert Mondavi, and started his own business shipping grapes back east to Italian-American families. Robert’s first job was nailing crates together to hold the grapes.

Robert’s parents instilled in him the virtues of hard work and encouraged him to explore the growing wine industry. After studying business and chemistry at Stanford University and taking a crash course in viticulture and enology at the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Mondavi immersed himself in all aspects of the wine industry.