The first time I met Robert Mondavi, guru and oracle of California wine-making, was about five years ago. He had just had surgery, a total knee-replacement, perhaps a month earlier. The occasion of our encounter was the Napa Valley Wine Auction, a high-ticket la-de-da charity event held on the lawn of a sprawling country house-hotel. (A few journalists like myself typically wander among the elite at these things.)
Mr Mondavi shrugged off his recent surgery as he led me to the dance floor, set up beneath a billowing white tent, in the shadow of huge arbutus trees that had tiny twinkling white lights threaded through their branches. I think I might have uttered a slight protest.
"Such good wine! Such good food! Of course we must dance!" he declared. Mr Mondavi was 80 years old at the time. We danced.
On Thursday night, I met Mr Mondavi again, this time at his 85th birthday party. This event was held at the family's Moorish-style 550-acre acre Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, California, smack in the middle of the Napa Valley, the region that put California wines on the map. I wondered - worried really - about how different he might be these years later. I need not have.
"Oh, I don't ski anymore, but I play tennis," said Mr Mondavi. He was robust as ever; barrel-chested, with chiselled profile, skin as taut as a man's less than half his age might be. Yes, he has hearing aids in both ears. The voice is a little raspier.
"We have so much more to do!" he says. "We are making worldclass wines, but this is just the beginning!"
Back in 1890, the Napa Valley, near San Francisco, was home to 120 wineries and about 20,000 acres of vineyards. Then came prohibition, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution that forbade the sale of alcohol. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but the wine industry was decimated. Many vineyards were ruined.
Cesare and Rosa Mondavi had emigrated to America from the Marche region of Italy in 1910. Despite prohibition, the law allowed families to make 200 gallons of fruit juice a year. With just a little encouragement, it would turn to wine. Cesare began shipping wine grapes - many of them the blackest and sweetest grapes such as Zinfandel and Muscat - from Napa to his old Italian emigre friends back East. In 1943, son Robert learned that the Charles Krug estate, an old and prestigious winery, could be had for $87,000. He cajoled his fiscally conservative parents into buying it.
Robert spent the next 20 years making acceptable bulk wines. The Mondavi name became synonymous in the US with a wine that was quaffable, not great, but decent and inexpensive. By the 1960s, Robert was restless and wanted to make something different, something better. He went to France in 1962 to study French techniques, and by 1966 opened the Robert Mondavi Winery. More than anything, perhaps, it was the joint partnership with Chateau Mouton de Rothschild in 1979 to create a fine wine called Opus One that changed the perception of Mondavi, and ultimately, of California wine.
The awards and the honours piled up.
Today, Mondavi wines are sold in 90 countries, including Ireland. The family owns some 5,000 acres of grapes and produces six million cases of wine a year. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange and is a financial boom story.
One expects that men like Mondavi, men who build profitable multi-national empires, must be ego-driven creatures, probably loathed by the families and employees who toil on their behalf. Often, that perception is accurate. Yet Mr Mondavi is widely admired and even adored. Make no mistake, of course, he is no shrinking violet.
When his son Michael worked at the winery during a summer off from college, according to a story from James Conway's book Napa, Robert instructed the staff to give Michael the dirtiest job; scraping mould off the bottom of a 36,000gallon redwood tank, flat on his back.
But such things were either forgotten or part of the sentimental lore at his lavish birthday party, attended by over 1,000 people eating, drinking and dancing to a live band's rendition of Stayin' Alive.
Against the backdrop of good food, good wine, and a sense of family, peace reigns in the Mondavi empire. Son Michael is the chief executive officer of the company; son Tim is the winemaker; daughter Marcia is a director. Wife Margrit Biever, a redoubtable presence, took the podium to kiss her husband, wish him a happy birthday, and present him with two emus.
I asked Margrit later why she chose to present her beloved with emus.
"What else are you going to give him?" she said. "Last year I gave him llamas. Oh, anyway, it's nice to see animals when you're coming up the driveway.