COMPOSING OPUS ONE

Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild announced their revolutionary partnership in 1980. Today, a young team led by winemaker Michael Silacci is forging its full identity

- BY MITCH FRANK.

Opus One was conceived in bed. A lavish canopy bed in a sumptuously decorated room in Bordeaux, to be precise. In 1978, Robert Mondavi journeyed to the town of Pauillac in Bordeaux to meet with Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the larger-than-life personality behind Château Mouton-Rothschild. Mondavi and Rothschild had first met eight years earlier and had been bouncing around the idea of a partnership since. But now they were meeting to discuss it for the first time as a serious idea and not a wistful dream.

The baron knew how to entertain. Greeting Mondavi with a hearty “Bob!” he acted as tour guide for the day, displaying his ease with English, which he learned during his years attending boarding school in the U.K. He showed Mondavi and Mondavi's daughter, Marcia, around the vineyards and cellars, and then his renowned museum of wine artifacts.

Mondavi remembered the day as perfect. In his memoir, he wrote, “That night, we met the baron for dinner in the family library. We sat around a small table, almost family-style, and we had quail roasted on the spit. During the meal we had the pleasure of drinking three glorious wines. First, a 25-year-old Châ-teau Clerc Milon. An excellent wine. Then, as the centerpiece of the evening, we enjoyed a 100-year-old bottle of Château Mouton. Amazing! A wine as smooth and sensuous as velvet. Finally, with dessert, we had a 1945 Château d’Yquem.”

The conversation flowed as easily as the wine, but they did not talk business. For that, the baron asked Mondavi to meet the next day at 9:30 a.m. Right on time, Mondavi showed up in the morning at Rothschild’s office, only to be told by a housekeeper that the baron almost always worked from bed. Thus, Mondavi was ushered to the bedroom and given a chair. Rothschild sat propped up on a small hill of pillows, a special desk across his lap and a phone at his side. A spaniel snored contentedly at his feet.