“Everyone knows the name Mondavi, but no one knows the name Continuum.”

Tim Mondavi spoke from an odd standpoint: head of a wine project that may have America’s most famous wine name behind it, but unable to use that name to alert people to the history and heritage he brings to it.

And it is history that means so much to the three children of the late Robert Mondavi — a family whose trials started in the prior generation with a feud between brothers, and the next generation was seemingly so linked to that heritage that it was unable to resist revisiting the scene of the crime.

The Mondavi family’s passion is wine, yet the Falcon Crest, soap-opera recitations of Mondavi family lore in books and magazines, much of it told luridly and lacking journalistic precision, ignores one crucial fact.

Mondavi is about wine. Great wine. That’s what Robert envisioned and pioneered, and Tim and his older brother, Michael, aim to keep great wine at the heart of new ventures.

Continuum is where Tim and his sister, Marcia, cast their wine future, in the high-altitude soils of Pritchard Hill in Napa’s eastern hills. They did so two months ago when they closed on the purchase of a large estate on July 16.

That, coincidentally, was Marcia’s birthday as well as the same date on which Robert first dug a spade in the earth when he launched his Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville in 1966.

In that 43-year period, the wine world has changed radically. Today, with the family wine empire sold to Constellation Brands, Tim, Marcia, and Michael have moved on.

Michael’s company, Folio Fine Wine Partners, markets wines from 30-some wine companies in California and around the world. It’s a prestigious portfolio and includes some of the top wines in the world.

Which is what Tim and Marcia, and their children, hope to create from the property that sits well above Lake Hennessy on the eastern edge of the valley, almost destined to have been a Mondavi project.

When it became clear that the family would lose control over the publicly traded Mondavi Winery, Tim began looking for a site to continue the family legacy. A trained wine maker (unlike his father, who was more a visionary, promoter, and quality-control genius), Tim finally saw this spot and realized one thing:

“If you draw a straight line from the tower at Mondavi to the cupola at Opus One and draw that line up the hill,” said Tim, “you wind up right here. It was destined to be where Continuum would be.”

This rolling hillside property, between 1,300 and 1,600 feet in altitude, has volcanic red soils and is slightly cooler than the Dalla Valle property in the foothills below.

Mountain neighbors include Chappellet, Bryant, Colgin, David Arthur, and a handful of other tiny projects. Each makes a cabernet sauvignon that sells for a lot of money. The 2005 Bryant and Colgin cabernets will cost you about $300 a bottle, such is the demand for them.

So Tim and Marcia could have charged a similar amount for Continuum, a great cabernet blend, but Marcia says price is not what this project is all about. The newly released 2005 Continuum is $140 a bottle.

What matters to Tim most is that the wine be a classic example of its soils, and the first three wines he made with this name, 2005 through 2007, were largely composed of fruit from Oakville’s western foothills.

Thus this wine is only the first step, to allow the family to keep its record intact of having made wine every year since 1919.

Soon, perhaps even by this harvest, Continuum will come entirely from these soils, and then Tim will see if he is charging enough for the wine.

The project already has a number of key Napa Valley executives on board, as well as a spectacular hospitality facility that is literally three miles up the steep slopes of Prichard Hill.

Some day, Tim hopes, Continuum will be mentioned alongside the great wines of the world – echoing almost exactly what his father often said of his Mondavi wines.

Wine of the Week

2008 Elsa Bianchi Malbec, San Rafael, Mendoza ($9) – Plum jam aroma with ripe, rather simple, direct flavors, but with a nice juicy finish. Serve slightly cooler than you would most reds, and this bargain from Argentina will match nicely with meat dishes.

Dan Berger lives in Sonoma County, where he publishes “Vintage Experiences,”a weekly wine newsletter. Write to him at danberger@rocketmail.com.