While not as celebrated in international wine circles as his late brother, Peter Mondavi Sr. nevertheless commands the respect of his peers for long-term management of a renowned Napa Valley wine company bought out of Prohibition-era bankruptcy.

Mondavi — who turns 94 in early November – is the last living child of Cesare and Rosa Mondavi, Italian immigrants who took title to the rundown Charles Krug Winery at the height of World War II.

Now, 65 years after his father purchased the valley’s first commercial winery, Mondavi is busy bringing the historic wine property up to its 21st century potential.

With the help of his sons, Marc and Peter Jr., the family patriarch unveiled last weekend the first phase of the Krug facelift — a remarkable refurbishing of a pair of 19th century landmarks, the Krug Carriage House and the winery’s Redwood Cellar.

Peppy and chatty as usual, Peter Mondavi Sr. welcomed the Register into the office where he’s called the shots for the better part of his life, as he talked about his parents, his siblings, his immediate family and the dedicated workers who produce outstanding Charles Krug wines vintage in and vintage out.

For more than two decades, Peter shared workaday tasks with his father, Cesare, and brother, Robert. In fact, the three of them were huddled together in a San Francisco banker’s office when it was agreed that the Mondavi family would take title to Krug.

It was a noteworthy property transaction as Charles Krug Winery was the first winery founded in the Napa Valley, in 1861. Prussian immigrant Charles Krug came to America at age 22 with little besides willpower and a willingness to work hard. Carefully selecting rootstocks, varietals and vineyard sites — a novel concept for that time — he became the major local winery figure of his era, greatly influencing Napa Valley’s future.

Following Krug’s death in 1892, James Moffitt, a business associate of the German winemaker and a San Francisco banker, took possession of the winery. Remarkably, Moffitt held onto the property through Prohibition, and began looking for a winemaking family to carry on in the spirit of Krug. He found that pioneering spirit in Cesare and Rosa Mondavi, to whom he sold the winery in 1943 for $75,000.

“My dad was interested and he knew the (asking) price,” Peter Mondavi Sr. recalled the other day. “While we were in his office, a call came in and Mr. Moffitt took it. I guess it was a coincidence but the caller was another party interested in the (Krug) winery. But Mr. Moffitt told the caller he was sorry but he just sold it. Then he came back to my dad and told him, ‘It’s yours’.”

Cesare Mondavi was 60, and spearheaded a dramatic renaissance in the decade that followed. By the early ’50s Cesare Mondavi was running an operation that could compete with names like Beaulieu, Beringer and Inglenook.

It was not an easy task, getting a rundown wine cellar up and running. But then Cesare Mondavi was never one to take the easy route.

Praiseworthy parents

Peter credits both his parents with making Charles Krug was it is today, praising their pioneering spirit in emigrating to the United States at a young age — Rosa was all of 17 — and establishing both business and family in the hardscrabble mining town of Virginia, Minn.

After his brother was killed in a mine cave-in, Cesare Mondavi wanted no part of the mining business, Peter recalls. “He established a saloon business and my mother set up a boarding house where she not only cooked, cleaned and did laundry for 15 boarders, she also raised four children,” he points out.

While Italian immigrants made up a substantial part of the iron ore mining town’s population, he says there were also a number of Finns living and working there. Eventually, his father sold the saloon in favor of opening a grocery store. It was the grocery operation that put his father in touch with a number of Italians anxious to make wine as they had done in their native country. That prompted Cesare Mondavi to come to California’s San Joaquin Valley where he bought grapes and shipped them back to clients in Virginia.

“After shipping grapes for about three seasons, my dad decided that was the business he wanted to be in and he moved my mother, brother, sisters and me to Lodi,” Peter remembers.

Even he marvels at the pioneering spirit of his parents, young immigrants who gambled that they could make a life in the New World, despite the fact that they didn’t speak a lick of English prior to coming to America. “The immigrant experience (in the early 1900s) was not so nice.”

“My dad was a great businessman,” Mondavi maintains. “He was a deep thinker, not a chatty guy. He thought about what he wanted and, with our mother’s blessing, made some pretty remarkable decisions.”

One of those important decisions was coming to California, to continue shipping fruit back to his Minnesota colleagues — zinfandel from Lodi and muscat from Fresno, the two grape varieties favored by the Italians making their own wines.

Soon, his father was running Acampo Winery and Distilleries and his search for outstanding grapes took him to Napa and Sonoma counties.

Peter recalls coming to the North Bay wine country on numerous occasions. “One time we were visiting Italian friends in Sonoma,” he says, breaking into a familiar welcoming smile. “They were building a home, but it wasn’t finished and they didn’t have any screens on the windows. I remember my mother staying up all night swatting mosquitos.”

Up and running

When his father purchased Charles Krug Winery, Peter was wearing his service uniform and happened to be home on leave. He’d worked as a chemist for his father at the Acampo winery and for a Woodbridge co-op, but, in 1942 enlisted in the Air Force. He was assigned to ground operations as a member of a chemical warfare division.

“I ended up in a supply depot in Warrington, England, near Manchester,” he notes. “After the war, I stayed on to move supplies, eventually coming home in 1946. It took me about six months to get adjusted ... to get back into (the wine) business.”

While the purchase price for Krug didn’t seem like a tremendous sum, the real expense, Peter advises, was in getting Krug up and running. “The price wasn’t frightening ... it was the rehab of the whole winery, just like we’re doing now.

“It was just dirt floors and mostly unusable redwood tanks. Part of it had been rented to (industry oldtimer) Lou Stralla, but a lot of it had just been let go.

“With the war on, the difficult task of getting supplies to rebuild and retrofit fell to my brother. I don’t know how Bob did it ... getting new tanks and putting that old winery back in shape. But he did it.”

The first vintage of cabernet sauvignon from the refurbished Charles Krug Winery came from the harvest of 1944, Peter says. “I still have a little of the 1944 in my personal cellar.”

He maintains the early success of Charles Krug under the Mondavi mantle can be credited to the fact that “we did a lot of bulk shipments of vin ordinaire in the beginning.”

A family trade

Peter Mondavi Sr. didn’t always think he wind up running a wine operation, even though he grew up with it.

“I had some thoughts about becoming an aeronautical engineer,” he confides, but the invitation to work with his father proved too tempting.

In addition, he fondly recalls summers working side-by-side with his competitive brother, nailing boxes together for grape shipments back East.

“When we grew up in Lodi, the wine business was a great business. We grew up with it ... it seemed to be a natural (for a career choice). It was a product we liked. We drank a little wine every day since we were kids. Mother would stir a little wine and sugar into our coffee.”

Peter reminisced about the incredible meals his mother, Rosa, prepared for his father’s clients. “When we were in Lodi, some times my dad would bring home a dozen clients and my mother was happy to see them. The more that came, the happier she was.”

Rosa Mondavi was also a gracious hostess once the Mondavi family relocated to St. Helena, he adds. She continued to welcome winery guests and clients to her kitchen and serve them meals that paired well with Krug wines. “She oversaw the family after dad passed away,” he adds softly.

Auspicious future

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not a fast moving family,” Peter continues with accompanying chuckle. He notes that he and his sons moved slowly but surely into programs designed to improve both wines and winemaking facilities at Krug.

Like Wente and Martini, over the years Charles Krug offered consumers wines that provided more bang for the buck. “We never adopted wild prices,” he declares, so profits in turn were reasonable — not the kind that allowed for rapid reinvestment.

“Lack of facilities was always an issue with us,” he points out as one of the reasons for the current refurbishing effort. “One time we ran out of tank space and had to pull some wine out of the cellar and put it into a railroad tank car we had out back.”

One aspect of the recent $8.5 million historical restoration which makes the Mondavi family especially proud is recycling of the 1940s redwood tanks into the ceiling and second story floor of the Krug Carriage House.

While winemaking operations for both Charles Krug and CK Mondavi wines take place on the Mondavi estate in St. Helena, separate cellars are maintained for each of them.

Working with Peter Mondavi Jr., David Galzignato is winemaker for Charles Krug wines. Annual production is 75,000 cases, with cabernet sauvignon the largest segment. The Bordeaux estate reds program accounts for about two-thirds of the annual output at Krug, says Peter Jr. Also marketed by Charles Krug are sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir, zinfandel and merlot, plus small amounts of special blends and single vineyard wines made by Galzignato.

Working with Marc Mondavi, John Moynier is winemaker for CK Mondavi wines. Annual production is 1 million cases, consisting of California appellation chardonnay, pinot grigio, white zinfandel, sauvignon blanc, zinfandel, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and a blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

Along with facilities improvements, the Mondavi family has been moving its vineyards toward organic certification. At present, about half of the family’s vines are certified organic, with 85 percent certification expected by 2010.