(Forbes) - Recently, I had the privilege of meeting Michael Mondavi, a luminary in the wine business whose family name has graced some of the most highly acclaimed and widely consumed bottles ever produced. He was just named “Person of the Year” by Wine Enthusiast magazine, and when he offered to sit down with me to share some tips about choosing the best wines for a business meeting, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to learn from a real master.

After all, who better to talk to about wine selection than someone who’s harvested and marketed everything from a $350 bottle of Opus One to a $10 bottle of Woodbridge?

First Course: Bring the Bubbles

Prior to meeting Mondavi, I expected to learn a lot about wine, but I didn’t expect to learn even more about business.  I was in for a treat.  Mondavi comes from a family that is widely considered to be wine industry royalty.  His father traveled the world to learn about different wines and to evangelize for the Napa region, helping to elevate California wines to the world stage.  Michael himself is a 50-year veteran of the wine business, where he has served as the CEO of a large family business, successfully took that business public, and eventually sold it to major conglomerate before reinventing himself with a new business start-up.  Along the way, he’s been through his fair share of business ups and downs, has been touted as a technological innovator and celebrated as a skilled vintner.

Fortunately, Mondavi had a sure-fire recipe to quickly set the tone for our meeting: bubbles. For some, bubbles make us think of celebration. Truth is, Champagne, Prosecco or other forms of bubbles are a great way to set the tone for a meeting – light, casual, and enjoyable.  It opens the palate and the mind.

“Bubbles are the perfect way to start a business lunch or after work get together,” he said as he poured a glass of Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve NV ($65). “They reset your palate so you can taste things again.”

Mondavi then started to tell the story of how he came to become the U.S. distributor and representative for the venerable French brand through his company, Folio Wine Partners.

“When we sold Robert Mondavi in 2004, I started Folio with my wife, Isabel, my son Rob and my daughter Dina because I knew we were too entrepreneurial to be good employees for someone else. We owned about 15 acres of our own grapes, which is really too small to be viable based on the challenges and expense of the current distribution system, so we needed a model where we could make the wine we wanted to make, but also run a viable business.”

He then went on to explain how he’s built an incredibly technologically-advanced wine business rooted in the 200+ year old European guild model, whereby artisans and merchants would band together to gain market share and carry the weight necessary to catch the attention of distributors.

The way the Mondavi’s business works is essentially a consortium model.  Today he has his own 125 acres of vineyard under Michael Mondavi Family Estate, which produces about 12 different high-end wines. This is a great model for producing high quality wine, but not a great model for scaling a global business. To get the scale he needs to keep growing the business, his Folio Wine Partners acts as an importer, whereby Mondavi identifies high quality producers in different parts of the world and enables them to bring their boutique, high-quality wines to the U.S. with the scale necessary to facilitate distribution.

Following this approach, Mondavi has become a sort of united front for about two dozen wine brands from around the world.  He’s also become something of an emissary for quality, helping to do the homework for consumers to identify and access wineries that are sustainable and offer premium quality.

Second Course: Depth

As the conversation dove deeper into Mondavi’s evolution from the CEO of the publicly traded Robert Mondavi Corporation, one of the world’s largest wineries, to his current role as “Founder and Coach” – a title he gave himself – of a scrappy start-up that is disrupting the industry, he poured a glass of Bruno Giacosa Falletto Barolo 2011 ($250).

“We have two rules: only do business with families we like and respect and only sell wine that we would serve to our friends and families.”

It’s a message that settled in nicely with the deep Barolo.

Mondavi continued: “In 1969, I made what I had thought to be the best wine I had ever made.  I raced in to have my grandmother taste it.  She was that classic Italian grandmother; maybe five feet tall.  She tasted it and said: ‘Mikey, make good wine!’

“I was crestfallen. ‘Isn’t this good?’

She said: ‘Good wine is what you serve to your family.  Don’t only make wine for the rich.’

And that was really it for me. That’s what we’re trying to do with Folio. We want to bring together the great wines that we would have at our family’s dinner table and run a great business making those wines available.”

While I love Italian wines, I find them extremely confusing to understand and follow. Mondavi’s selection here is amazing and helps someone with limited Italian wine knowledge have a sure fire hit with any meal.

Third Course: Soul

It’s one thing to memorialize the philosophy of quality over quantity, but it’s another to turn it into a business model that can give the big wine conglomerates a run for their money. As Mondavi explained how he’s managing to do just that with a smaller physical footprint than he’s ever had before, he poured a glass of Animo Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 ($85) harvested from his Michael Mondavi Family Estate in Napa Valley.

The selection is kind of a metaphor for Mondavi’s career in the wine business. Rich, deep and strong, the wine keeps inviting you back for more, but it isn’t easy to make. It was grown on a parcel of land high on the Atlas Peak in the Vaca Mountain range of Napa Valley. When Mondavi surveyed the site for the first time before buying it, his daughter looked around and said: “Dad, this place has animo.” The Italian word for soul or spirit, animo is indeed coursing through every sip of this delicious red.

The process of growing it, though, is much more science than magic. Because the vines are planted on a hill, irrigation can be a challenge. One that is increasingly being addressed with state-of-the art technology.