Success Quote by Robert Mondavi

Mondavi’s line is a velvet-rope argument disguised as a toast. By tethering wine to “civilized man,” he isn’t just praising fermentation; he’s laundering a commercial product through the prestige of history. The phrasing smuggles in a claim of legitimacy: wine isn’t a luxury or a vice, it’s a companion of progress itself. If it’s been there “from the beginning,” then skepticism about drinking, marketing, or indulgence starts to look prudish, even anti-cultural.

The subtext is also pointedly selective. “Civilized man” invokes banquets, monasteries, and Mediterranean idylls, not exploitation in vineyards, alcoholism, or the ways temperance movements framed alcohol as social rot. It’s a lineage story meant to make wine feel inevitable and tasteful, the kind of inevitability that turns a purchase into participation. Mondavi, as a businessman who helped engineer Napa’s global identity, is speaking from inside a project: upgrading American wine from regional habit to cultural institution. In the late 20th century, when U.S. food culture was professionalizing and Europe still held the symbolic high ground, linking wine to civilization was a strategic shortcut to authority.

The sentence works because it’s both broad and intimate. “Been with” suggests companionship rather than consumption; “from the beginning” offers mythic scale without needing evidence. It invites the listener to see their glass not as an indulgence, but as an inheritance.