Peter Mondavi last November celebrated his 95th birthday, a feat that makes him older than the Napa Valley's wine history, at least in its modern form. A pivotal part of helping to write that history, Mondavi along the way shared information, traded tricks and ultimately made friends with other pioneers, among them Joe Heitz and Louis P. Martini. What they had in common beyond their places in time was a scientifically-minded curiosity about how to make better wine, twinned with an old-school sense that their wines should remain within financial reach of the everyday person.

Napa Valley continues to churn out cult producers left and right -- the Staglins, the Colgins, the Hundred Acres -- but the best bang for your buck in Napa Valley Cabernet remains within the following three tried-and-true family-run businesses.

If ever there were a first family of American wine, the Mondavis are it, with their historic highs and lows and herculean contributions to our now-established traditions with wine. The lows have included the very public, painful rift between brothers Robert and Peter Mondavi over the direction of Charles Krug; the highs such innovations as the use of oak barrels for aging and cold fermentation in developing white wines. Through it all, Mondavi became the closest thing to a household name in America, associated with its burgeoning interest in wine.

The quiet man behind much of that has been Peter Mondavi, a meticulous scientist who preferred to toil behind the scenes, the taciturn tortoise to late brother Robert's charismatic hare.

Peter Mondavi remains president and chief executive officer of Charles Krug Winery and CK Mondavi Family Vineyards, continuing to live on the Charles Krug estate north of St. Helena, a property founded in 1861 and purchased by Mondavi's parents, Cesare and Rosa, in 1943 for $75,000.

"I give credit to my folks. They had very little education, but they knew what to do, were strong and had desire," Mondavi said. "In those days, you just worked at it. Wine was a new business, very little was known about it, and there were very few wine drinkers."

Today, the family produces 65,000 cases a year under the Charles Krug-Peter Mondavi name, the side of the business run by youngest son Peter, Jr. since 1998; older brother Marc's side of the business, CK Mondavi, produces about 1 million cases each year.

Mondavi graduated with a degree in economics from Stanford University in 1937 and also attended classes at UC Berkeley specifically to research the effects of cold fermentation on white and rosé wines. He and his brother Robert operated Krug together for 23 years, living onsite alongside their parents, spouses and kids during much of those years, introducing not only the use of cold fermentation, but also glass-lined tanks and French oak barrels to their winery.

Robert Mondavi famously left to found his own winery down the road in Oakville in 1966, the first big new winery to be built from the ground up in the Napa Valley since Prohibition.

But unlike what happened with Robert Mondavi Winery, which sold to Constellation Brands in 2004, Peter Mondavi is determined to keep Charles Krug in the family and to preserve its estate vineyards, investing $21 million over the last several years to substantially replant much of its older vines to better clones, and largely to red Bordeaux varietals.

The family is also among the largest owners of certified organic vineyard land in the Napa Valley, with 11 properties totaling 850 acres from Carneros to the Charles Krug Vineyard surrounding the winery.

"It symbolizes our respect for tradition, our ongoing commitment to protect the land and buildings that are our legacy and our faith in the future of this family, this winery and this remarkable place," Peter Mondavi, Jr. said. "These are the values our father instilled in us."

Over recent years Mondavi and sons have made noticeable efforts to ramp up quality over quantity, particularly of the Charles Krug-labeled wines, most notably Charles Krug Family Reserve, which includes a vintage selection cabernet sauvignon (2006; $69), and Generations (2005; $51), a proprietary high-end, Bordeaux-style blend.

"At one point for Napa Valley Cabernet Charles Krug was on the list," Mondavi, Jr. said. "We clearly fell off that short list and became more commonly associated with California or the North Coast, rarely with Napa."

That needed to change and change it has.

"Mother and Dad did this for us, and everything I do is for the future of our families," concluded the elder Mondavi. "I feel very proud to know our efforts are not in vain."

Heitz Wine Cellars in St. Helena is a legendary cabernet sauvignon house started in 1961 by Joe and Alice Heitz. Daughter Kathleen Heitz Myers, who calls her father Joe, "the winemaker's winemaker," now runs the business.

Joe Heitz passed away in 2000. His wife Alice continues to live on the 160-acre winery property east of Silverado Trail on Taplin Road. All along, the Heitzs also maintain their modest speck of a tasting room on Highway 29, the first plot of land they ever farmed.

Heitz moved out to California in the 1940s from Illinois, where his father had made home wine. He found his calling while serving in the Air Force, taking a night job working in a winery, falling in love with the climate, the culture and the people of California. After the war, he went to University of California Davis where he earned a degree in enology. He arrived in the Napa Valley in the late 1940s, apprenticing alongside grand master Andre Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyards.

"It was a combination of falling in love with California, the climate, the culture, the people, it was everything," Heitz Myers said. "Even back then, California was ahead of its time with fine dining and fresh food."

Unsure of his next move, he took a job at California State University Fresno, setting up a curriculum for their burgeoning enology program and teaching for three years. But the bug had bitten. If he couldn't take the top job at someone else's winery, it was time to start a place of his own.

Heitz produces about 40,000 cases annually. Son David is the winemaker; while daughter Kathleen remembers moving into the old St. Helena farmhouse in elementary school, the site of the Heitz homestead still and circa-1898 stone winery.

When Tom and Martha May came to town in the early 1960s, taking over an old ranch in Oakville and eventually planting grapes, someone dropped off a bottle of Heitz Cabernet as a welcoming. Impressed, they soon stopped by the Heitz sales room on Highway 29, where they met Joe and Alice Heitz and were invited to dinner. The families not only became lifelong friends but when the Mays were ready to harvest the first grapes from what they had started calling Martha's Vineyard, Heitz was given first crack.

He used the grapes in a larger Napa Valley bottling that first year, 1965, but Heitz's Martha's Vineyard was, year after year, among the best bottles of Cabernet produced in California.

"There are a handful of people that made Napa Valley the pre-eminent appellation in America," said Peter Mondavi, Jr., whose father, Peter Sr., had always been close to Heitz. "Joe Heitz was one of those people. His Martha's Vineyard Cabernets, under his unwavering focus and dedication, rank among the finest wines ever produced in California."

Heitz was always considered an innovator. Having picked up plenty of lessons from Tchelistcheff and others, he wasn't afraid to follow his own path, opting to make 100 percent cabernet sauvignon when others preferred to make blends, exporting to faraway places like Hong Kong and choosing to age his wines in French oak.

"Our reputation for consistency and quality in good years and bad years has stayed with us," Heitz Myers noted. "We wouldn't be in business if it was just my parents' peers who were our customers. My parents had the creativity, the idea and they really broke out of the box with their work ethic, which they passed on. But if you don't modernize, keep evolving, you become stagnant."

Heitz continues to follow a late-release policy; the 2004 Martha's ($150) is the current vintage.

Mike Martini is the third generation of his family to make the wine at Louis M. Martini in St. Helena, a winery his grandfather pioneered in 1933. It has been a consistently fine producer of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and zinfandel ever since, manly wines reflective of their crafters.

"I'm looking for savoryness," Martini said. "A lot of people skip that in wine development, but it's what makes the roof of your mouth want to water, that's what drives your gastric juices, makes you hungry. My Dad always called it simply, 'come hither.' "

The winery's longevity lends itself to good value. An early acquirer of vineyard land throughout Napa and Sonoma counties, Martini offers pedigreed Cabernets for as low as $17 a bottle -- old-school pricing for modern wines.

"Our prices are a philosophical thing," Martini explained. "My grandfather, in particular, saw that the future of our industry, especially when they were making wine, was to put wine on the table every night in every household. You’re not going to do that with expensive wines."

A noted visionary when it came to such viticultural innovations as frost protection and clonal research, Mike's father, Louis P. Martini, grew the family winery from 10,000 cases to 300,000 at its peak, making lots of what the younger Martini terms "weird stuff" -- California Burgundy, white zinfandel, chenin blanc.

Over the last several decades, Martini has brought his own style to the wines at Louis M. Martini, finely blending the personalities and talents of those who have come before into his own creation and improving quality by cutting production by 50 percent.

While there are plenty of value offerings, Mike is also taking Martini's quality to a higher level with Lot 1, a 500-case-a-year Cabernet (2005; $125) sourced from some of the Napa Valley’s best mountain vineyards, including Stagecoach Vineyard on Atlas Peak.

Good things come to those who last. The Peter Mondavi family at Charles Krug, the second generation of the Heitz family and Mike Martini, his family's third-generation winemaker at Louis Martini, are survivors and still drivers of America's pre-eminent wine appellation.

The families all reach back to the days before wine was accepted and celebrated as an everyday beverage in people's homes. They have a keen understanding of wine's importance on the table, with food, and among family and friends as a way to bring people together. As such, they also remain committed to making wine that is within reach of the everyday drinker, wines that age, wines of substance, wines to remember.

Virginie Boone is a Sonoma Valley-based wine writer. She has reported on the Northern California wine scene for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and its affiliate food and wine magazine, Savor.

Photo of Napa Valley vineyard by Andrew Zarivny

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