Robert Mondavi changed wine. His grandson wants to change farming.

Robert Mondavi paved the way for Napa Valley to take its place among the leading wine regions of the world and raised the bar for all American producers.

Through the power of his charismatic personality, Mr. Mondavi, a passionate visionary who founded the Robert Mondavi Winery after being forced out of the family business, practically forced Napa to strive for greatness.

Now Carlo Mondavi, a grandson of Robert, is taking on a similar role, pushing the California wine industry in a new direction that stems not from the aspirations of the 20th century, but from the existential threat of the 21st century: climate change.

Mr Mondavi, 43, envisions something of an agricultural revolution that would curb agriculture’s carbon footprint, which is estimated to be about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions each year. It requires a combination of regenerative agriculture, increased biodiversity and what he calls renewable agriculture, which no longer relies on the fossil fuel industry, relying instead on renewable energy sources.

Mr. Mondavi, a farmer and winemaker – on the coast of Sonoma, not, like his grandfather and father, in Napa – is far from the only person in the wine world who has tried to encourage the industry to consider agriculture as a tool to combat climate change. to counteract . Many farmers recognize the importance of preserving diverse ecosystems and avoiding the use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

But Mr. Mondavi, with whom I spent a day in Northern California in early May, has taken a concrete step to help more farmers achieve these goals by spearheading the development of the monarch tractor. This smart electric vehicle can operate autonomously while also serving as an agricultural research center of sorts, providing growers with the crop health data they need to better understand and make their operations more efficient.

“I think we can achieve climate stability,” he said, speaking with the optimism and evangelical fervor typical of the elder Mondavi, his words overflowing with facts and statistics. “We can make huge reductions in carbon and fossil fuels, but we’re in the worst place in the history of the planet right now.”

Tractors may seem like rather prosaic elements to build a revolution on. But they are essential agricultural tools, selling several million annually worldwide with an expected market to reach nearly $70 billion by 2027.

The problem: Most tractors are powered by diesel. They are expensive to run and spew pollutants, especially older diesel models.

“Tractors are much worse than regular cars,” said Mr. Mondavi.

Enter the Monarch, a compact tractor dedicated to small fruit and vegetable farms, including vineyards. It is based on electric vehicle technology, robotics and artificial intelligence that Mr. Mondavi sees as a solution to the obstacles that many conventional farmers believe prevent them from switching to organic or other more sustainable methods.

“This is technology that helps our planet,” said Mr. Mondavi. “It changes economic dynamics, making it cheaper to grow organically or regeneratively than conventionally.”

Steve Matthiassona farmer, winemaker and vineyard consultant in Napa Valley, has two Monarchs on order and is an enthusiastic advocate.

“The argument against organic farming, from a climate perspective, was using diesel to do more tractor work instead of using synthetic chemicals to get work done,” he said. “This negates that argument. Now we can farm organically without diesel, using renewable energy.”

The tractor has the ability to drive itself, but like self-driving cars, the idea can make people nervous. Still, driving a tractor is a dangerous job, especially with vineyards on slopes. Every year, farmers around the world die in tractor accidents. Self-driving offers an added bonus.

“It allows us to give winegrowers more options to manage multiple tractors and more complexity, rather than one person, one tractor, as we currently do,” said Mr Matthiasson. “More responsibility, more pay, more opportunities.”

In addition, the tractor comes with a full suite of cameras and sensors, controlled by proprietary software, that not only allow for autonomous driving, but also the collection of a wide range of data about a vineyard, such as crop health, yield estimation , insect life and moisture.

“By having a better idea of ​​what exactly is happening in different parts of the vineyard, we can target our agricultural inputs more effectively, making significant savings, which is not only beneficial for the bottom line, but also for the environment,” says Matthiasson . said.

Not everyone sees the Monarch as a revolutionary potential. Mimi Casteel, a farmer and grape grower in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and an advocate of local, regenerative agriculture, recognizes the impact a vehicle like the Monarch can have. But she said a green tractor does little to address underlying issues in our food system, such as global supply chains and farms that are sprawling industrialized monocultures rather than diverse ecosystems.

“I love that he’s focused on making change, and I think what he’s doing can definitely be part of a future that’s more regional and sustainable,” she said. “But when I think of General Mills millions of dollars into regenerative monoculture to continue making Cheerios, we avoid the root causes.

“Even under clean energy, it’s still going to be prohibitively expensive — solar panels, batteries, all these things take huge amounts of energy to build, and the materials have to come from somewhere. The effort it takes to get people used to regional food systems, I think that would be progress.”

If wine wasn’t exactly his destiny, Mr. Mondavi was sure early in life that he would.

“I always knew, from the age of seven, that I wanted to do whatever my grandfather did,” he recalls. “It was his passion and my father’s.”

When Robert Mondavi Winery was sold to Constellation Brands in 2004 after years Through ambition and family strife, Carlo’s father, Tim Mondavi, the youngest son of Robert Mondavi who had played a leadership role there for a long time, founded his own Napa Valley winery, continuum. It was small and focused specifically on one wine, a cabernet sauvignon based blend.

Carlo attended university in Aix-en-Provence, France, wanting to learn the language and culture, but left before graduating to become a professional snowboarder for a time. He then worked in wineries in France and Italy. In the process, he fell in love with pinot noir.

“Joining my family business was not automatic,” said Mr. Mondavi. “Continuum was a start-up and too small. I had to work outside the family. It was the opposite of being told, ‘You’re going to do this.’”

He teamed up with his younger brother, Dante, to make pinot noir, but it took them 10 years, he said, to get his father’s blessing. Finally, in 2013, they settled RAENAgricultural Research and Enology Course, which makes small batches of pinot noir on the Sonoma Coast.

“Daddy didn’t want us to go too far,” he said. “He had to be convinced. Now he’s super supportive.

Sourced from various coastal regions, RAEN wines are exquisite, delicate in texture, subtle in aroma and flavour, and delicious with food, all qualities long touted by the Mondavi family.

Mr. Mondavi had long been alarmed by the changing climate, but it was the demise of the monarch butterfly that he says spurred him on to activism. Populations of butterflies, important cogs in the food chain and crucial pollinators, have declined dramatically over the past 50 years due to habitat loss and the widespread use of herbicides such as glyphosate. They are now classified as endangered.

He saw this happen to other pollinators, such as honeybees, and became a staunch advocate of the Xerces Society, which is dedicated to the conservation of invertebrates. He also initiated the Monarch Challengea movement that encourages organic farming in Northern California by raising awareness of the dangers of chemical farming.

“I have friends who farm conventionally,” he said. “No one wants to harm Mother Earth.”

But education was not enough for him. The main objections, he said, were that organic farming costs more and requires much more tractor use, causing another set of environmental problems.

Although the challenge failed, he said, it was the birth of a new idea.

He wondered whether an electric tractor could remove the objections. He started talking to people in the tech industry and collaborating with three like-minded veterans of the electric car and artificial intelligence industry to found Monarch in 2019.

Mr. Mondavi’s role in the development was to provide the farmer’s point of view and evaluate each design idea for its practical appeal. With headquarters in Livermore, California, and a manufacturing agreement with Foxconn in Lordstown, Ohio, the first tractor was delivered to Constellation Brands, the company that now owns Robert Mondavi, in late 2022. This year, Monarch hopes to build 1,000 tractors and scale up to 25,000 by 2026.

With the design phase completed, Mr. Mondavi now acts as a wandering ambassador of sorts for Monarch, proclaiming his virtues to all who will listen, as he continues with his brother at RAEN and spends time in Italy at Sori della Sorbaa project with his wife, Giovanna Bagnasco, whose family produces Brandini Barolo.

“This is the hardest work I’ve ever done – seven days a week, day and night,” he said.

He described the frequent air travel as both “one of my greatest pleasures and greatest guilt”.