The origin story of Opus One: ‘Phil and Bob’s Big Red’

With thanks to Christopher Barefoot of Opus for sharing his memories.

There should be a niche travel company created mirroring Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s holiday choices. There’s the island of Ischia, where he escaped for a distraction in June 1973 while waiting to hear if Mouton Rothschild had been promoted to First Growth. There’s Hasselager Manor in Denmark, the oldest Renaissance building in the country where he liked to travel to meet friends. And then there’s the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, set on Kauna’oa Bay on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Built by Laurance S Rockfeller, it was the most expensive hotel construction to date by the time of the ribbon-cutting ceremony in July 1965, and quickly attracted a host of celebrity guests to the lava-strewn shores of Hawaii’s west coast.

It was, suitably enough, the setting for the first meeting between Baron Philippe and Robert Mondavi in 1970, five years after the hotel opening. They hadn’t met before, but they knew each other by reputation – Mondavi as the first man to have built a major new winery in Napa since Prohibition, and Philippe de Rothschild as the racing-car-driving playboy baron who was battling to have his Mouton Rothschild estate promoted to First Growth Bordeaux (a feat he would achieve three years later).

At some point over the few days they spent there during a wine and spirits industry convention – not too much of a stretch to imagine it was over a few glasses of wine in the hotel’s handsome bar rather than at a corporate stand – the idea was raised of their making a wine together. Apparently suggested by the baron, it turned out to be premature. Napa Valley was starting to draw the attention of an international crowd, but Mondavi was still in the throws of a bitter fallout with his brother Peter; a fight that would almost bankrupt him.

Rothschild meanwhile was busy fighting for Château Mouton Rothschild to be promoted to 1855 First Growth. The battle had taken him much of the previous 20 years – started in earnest in 1952 and reaching its end game by the early 1970s. It would keep him fully occupied until June 23, 1973, when Mouton finally joined Lafite Rothschild, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Latour as First Growths of Bordeaux, 118 years after the 1855 classification*.

It meant that a shared winemaking project would be put on the backburner until 1978. But the relationship had been formed between the aristocratic Baron who was the 4th generation of his family at a centuries-old château and the 1st generation American wine visionary who had built his company from nothing.

By 1978, everything had changed. Baron Philippe had renewed energy after Mouton’s promotion, and by this point the economic precipice brought about by the Oil Crisis of the 1970s had receded for both men. The 1976 Judgement of Paris, when Californian wines roundly beat the French (including the 1970 vintage of Mouton Rothschild) in a blind tasting had increased interest in the Napa Valley. Plenty of French winemakers were disgusted at the result, but the smart ones wanted to find out more.

Not only that, but Mondavi in 1978 settled the legal dispute with his brother. You can read all about it in remarkably detailed articles in the New York Times, or in the unputdownable The House of Mondavi by Julia Flyn Siler. In it, we are told that Judge Robert Carter ordered that Robert be paid US$538,885 in compensation for his forced departure from the Charles Krug Winery. In addition to the cash settlement, Mondavi was given land (and not just any land – he received 250 acres of the To Kalon vineyard, the famed vineyard that was first planted by Henry W Crabb in the late 1860s).

It meant that he was able to buy back the remaining shares of his eponymous Robert Mondavi winery that he had sold to an investor when in dire straits a few years earlier, and was now able to plan for the future. Able, in other words, to meet the Baron halfway.

Later that year, Baron Philippe invited Mondavi to Pauillac to visit him at Mouton Rothschild. It was only Mondavi’s second visit to France, and he took his daughter Marcia with him. The Rothschilds, as you can imagine, know a thing or two about entertaining, and it sounds like they put on the full performance for the Mondavis. A private family dinner (on the French side this meant Philippe and his right-hand man Philippe Cottin) was kicked off with a kir aperitif – white wine and cassis liqueur from Mouton’s own blackcurrant bushes, that lie just beyond the vines over the border from AOC Pauillac. Dinner was served with 1870 Mouton and 1945 Yquem, with no business discussed that night.

The next morning, Mondavi went to Baron Philippe’s office to find him for their planned meeting, but instead found the housekeeper, who told him, ‘but monsieur, the Baron works from his bedroom’.

Led up to the bedroom, he found Philippe reclining in bed, with his English Springer Spaniel at his feet, his lap desk and a giant cup of coffee. At this point, I should add, Baron Philippe was 76 years old, with bushy grey sideburns and hair fairly long on the back but balding on top, ‘an explosion of tangled greyness,’ as the New York Times put in in 1980.

The two men sat together and, over the next one and a half hours, scoped out pretty much all that would become Opus One. The notes from that meeting are still preserved today, and list the following points:

 

• The venture would be 50/50 (this remains true today, even though Mondavi has been replaced by Constellation Brands. The Mondavi family’s decision to sell up in 2004 triggered a right of 1st refusal for the Rothschilds, but they decided to keep it as a joint venture.
• The wine would be made with winemakers from both sides of the Atlantic, combining the best of both worlds – initially this meant Lucien Sionneau from Mouton and Robert’s son Tim Mondavi.
• Wine would be made in the Robert Mondavi winery (‘this will change’ say the original notes – and it did, although not until 1991, three years after Baron Philippe’s death). Mouton in return would supply oak barrels for ageing, and fund other expenses.
• The wine would be of the highest quality.

 

Each player was bringing something very different to the party. Mondavi knew the Valley, the sites, the players, the distribution system and had been running his own vineyard for 12 years. Baron Philippe brought the renown, the attention of the wine world, deep pockets and, well, himself.

Mondavi sold one small block of To Kalon to Opus, and they bought further plots together around the site of today’s winery building. In 1979, Sionneau came over to work on the first vintage. He had never left Bordeaux, and spoke very little English. The two winemakers disappeared into separate corners of the winery, each making his own blend, and brought them out for Mondavi to assess. Who promptly said, ‘no, go back in there and make one together.’

The result, at this point, had no name; just the date and both signatures on the label (instead it was nicknamed by merchants, I am told by author Jennifer Basye Sander, as ‘Bob and Phil’s Big Red’).

It wasn’t until July 1981, with the first edition of Auction Napa Valley (then called Napa Valley Wine Auction) that it was given its first public outing. Originally due to be held at the estate of Pat Montandon in Rutherford, at the last minute it was changed to the newly-opened Meadowood resort owned by Bill Harlan (then a real estate developer and known as William). The last lot of the auction was a mixed case of the new project listed as NapaMédoc Cabernet Sauvignon with an expected hammer price of around US$5,000.

Michael Broadbent was the auctioneer, on a day that was so hot that even this famously elegant Englishman discarded his jacked and stuck his feet into a tub of cold water to cool down. The final two bidders came down to Mel Dick, who had begun at Southern Wines & Spirits in 1969, and Syracuse retailer Charles Mara – with Mara getting in the winning bid at US$24,500. At the time it was the highest price ever paid for an American wine, and from what I understand Mara still has the case, unopened.

Arguments over the name however were continuing a year later, when finally the Baron made a call from Paris to suggest Opus, inspired by a suggestion from his son-in-law Jean Pierre de Beaumarchais. It was Robert’ wife Magrit who suggested adding the ‘One’, creating Opus One.

The only thing left to do was the label – and for that they called on designer Susan Pate, who was dispatched to Mouton and remembers coming up with over 200 designs before finding one that both men agreed on. The back-to-back profiles of the founders that she created remains on the label today (Pate went on to create many other iconic labels, from Harlan to Quintessa and Luce, and is still working as a graphic designer alongside her daughter Chloe).

From here, the 1979 and 1980 vintages were released in a mixed case in 1984 at a price of US$50 per bottle, the highest price for an American wine to date. It raised a few eyebrows but after – another first – a wine-by-the-glass campaign around local restaurants was quickly accepted. Everywhere, that is, but France, with Frank Prial in the New York Times in 1984 quoting Baroness Philippine de Rothschild as saying ‘The French are amused by Opus One… but they’re not for the moment prepared to buy it’.

*Mouton’s promotion is another story entirely, and one that I cover in Bordeaux Legends – my first book from 2012 that I recently reissued as an NFT in late October.