Robert Mondavi is dead.

Long live Robert Mondavi?

Yes, the king of American winemaking is gone, but the direction of his legacy remains to be seen. Great, visionary men, such as Inglenook's Gustave Niebaum and John Daniel Jr., preceded the Oracle of Oakville, trying to further the cause of Napa Valley and quality California winemaking only to see their work diminished by corporate interests after their involvement.

Wither goes the memory of Robert Mondavi and his namesake winery? Time will tell.

It was never supposed to be this way. Mondavi's charmed life seemed pointed toward the beginning of a winemaking dynasty, not unlike the multi-generational chateaux of Bordeaux after which Mondavi fashioned his winery. Missteps, inaction and family feuds led to the sale of Robert Mondavi Winery in 2004 for $1.2 billion. This took the winery out of family hands and put it in the back pocket of behemoth Constellation Brands, the $5.2 billion wine, beer and spirits company that subsequently resold various parts of the Mondavi empire.

The lost princes of the Mondavi Winery, Robert's sons Tim and Michael, have sailed out on ventures of their own. Tim, who once headed up winemaking for his father, recently released Continuum, a $130-per-bottle cabernet sauvignon-based wine that has received great reviews. And Michael, the former salesman for Mondavi wines, now heads Folio Fine Wine Partners, a Napa-based winemaking and wine distribution company.

On a rainy afternoon at Alon's Bakery & Market in Dunwoody, I chatted about this tragic story with Julia Flynn Siler, author of "The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty" (Gotham Books, $15). She was in town to promote her book, which has gone through eight printings and has just been released in paperback.

Our discussions eerily took us to the topic of how history would view the 94-year-old Mondavi, whose health had been in steep decline since the sale of the winery. Fewer than 12 hours after our meeting, news of Mondavi's death ricocheted throughout the wine world.

"He was an icon along with Alice Waters and Julia Child," Flynn Siler said. "He went to France and after touring all the great chateaux, he came back with this idea that California wines can and should be much better. He became an evangelist for California wines. He said: 'We have everything we need, the climate and the technological know-how to make wine as good as Bordeaux grand cru.'"

Of course, when Mondavi said this in the 1950s, the few California wineries that existed —- with exceptions such as the formerly great Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards —- made plonk, the industry term for weak, watery, insipid wines found in gallon jugs. At the time, Mondavi, along with his father, Cesare, and his brother, Peter, made and sold plonk, too, under the Charles Krug label.

As Flynn Siler explains in her book, Robert's desire to emulate the great wines of the world led to a rift that culminated in a famous fistfight between Robert and Peter, who saw no need for change. By 1965, Robert was booted from the family business.

Out, but not down, Robert embarked on a fanciful mission to completely remake the California wine industry. In 1966, he founded the Robert Mondavi Winery in the Napa Valley town of Oakville.

"In the 1960s or the early 1970s, you would never see a California wine on a wine list or in a wine shop," Flynn Siler explained. "It was all French. And that meant the best."

Flynn Siler, a longtime business writer for The Wall Street Journal, came to chronicle the Mondavi saga shortly after Michael Mondavi was unceremoniously pushed off Mondavi Corp.'s board of directors in 2004. She was stonewalled by those involved with his departure and the ensuing sale to Constellation, which naturally piqued her curiosity.

"It was a closed world and hard to try and penetrate," said Flynn Siler, who spent the early 1990s profiling European family businesses from the Journal's London office. "I was fascinated and wanted to try to understand this world better."

She attended the remarkable 2005 Napa Valley wine auction that saw the stiff-lipped reconciliation of Robert with his brother Peter in the form of a barrel of wine jointly produced by Charles Krug Winery, still headed by Peter, and the Robert Mondavi Winery, of which Robert was merely a figurehead. The historic barrel was auctioned, but, as Flynn Siler reports, it was clear that Robert Mondavi's once regal status had faded. While the barrel brought in an amazing $401,000, it took the masterful cajoling of emcee Jay Leno to get the bidding that high. Other lots, such as those including wines from Colgin Cellars and Screaming Eagle —- makers of cult cabernet sauvignons, Napa's new royalty —- more easily climbed to and exceeded such bids.

Three years and some 500 interviews later, Flynn Siler's book vividly portrays the events of the auction and takes readers on the roller-coaster ride that was the life of Robert Mondavi. She shares the details of the Mondavi family's bitter business and personal struggles, but she cannot hide her respect for what Robert Mondavi did for the American wine industry. She also cannot conceal her melancholy as she witnessed first-hand the ebbing of a golden era, as she wrote in her remembrance at www.juliaflynnsiler.com, posted the day after Mondavi's death:

"I was lucky enough to have the last formal interview Robert Mondavi ever granted to a writer. Our meeting took place in a second floor conference room of the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville on March 29, 2005, nearly four months after the forced sale of the Robert Mondavi Corp. Although the sale proceeds helped Mr. Mondavi fulfill his many philanthropic pledges, it also put him out of the wine business for the first time since the 1930s. It was a sad spring for Mr. Mondavi, then 91, and his wife Margrit, and I left that interview feeling as if Robert Mondavi was already beginning to slip away."

gil.kulers@winekulers.com