The $200 Million Mondavi Bet

How much would you spend on an idea that every analyst says is dying? This spring, Constellation Brands answered: two hundred million dollars.The Robert Mondavi Winery reopened in Oakville in April after a three-year renovation — at the exact moment Silicon Valley Bank was telling the wine industry the bottom was insight and nine million Americans had walked away from wine. This week’s essay is about why that bet makes sense. The bottom quartile of wineries is drowning; the top quartile is growing, and almost all of them are places you have tovisit. Jon traces that back to 1966, when Robert Mondavi looked at an American wine industry that was a national punchline and decided it wasn’t a quality problem — it was a pricing error — then opened his doors to the public and invented the pilgrimage economy. Sixty years later, somebody paid $200 million for the idea.New episodes Tuesday mornings.