Success Quote by Robert Mondavi

“We definitely need to get the excitement back” is the kind of deceptively simple line that only lands if you understand how fragile “excitement” is in a mature industry. Mondavi wasn’t selling a beverage; he was selling permission: to care about taste, about place, about the story in the glass. The intent reads like a pep talk, but it’s also a diagnosis. When a category gets successful, it also gets standardized. Distribution consolidates, brands get risk-averse, marketing starts to speak in interchangeable adjectives. “Back” implies something lost to scale: the early sense that American wine could still surprise people, still convert skeptics, still feel like a cultural movement rather than a shelf segment.

Mondavi’s businessman voice matters here. He’s not waxing poetic about terroir; he’s talking about demand. Excitement is the renewable resource that keeps consumers exploring, keeps premium pricing defensible, keeps younger drinkers from drifting to whatever feels more alive (craft beer yesterday, cocktails and THC drinks today). The “definitely” is doing rhetorical work: it’s urgency without melodrama, a boardroom certainty that doubles as a creative directive.

Contextually, Mondavi’s career tracked California wine’s leap from regional curiosity to global prestige, and then into the late-stage problem of prestige: how to avoid becoming a polite habit. The subtext is a challenge to the whole ecosystem - winemakers, marketers, critics, retailers - to stop treating wine like a finished product and start treating it like a conversation. Excitement, for Mondavi, isn’t garnish. It’s the business model.