(Forbes) - This past Sunday—September 25th—Napa Valley lost a legend: Mary Weber Novak, founder of Spottswoode Estate Vineyard and Winery and a giant in the American wine industry, passed away at 84 years of age. This comes on the heels of another major loss to the Napa Valley wine community: The passing of Margrit Biever Mondavi on September 2nd at 91 years of age. Both of them left lasting impacts on the world of American wine, and on the role that women play in it, that is impossible to overstate.

Mondavi was instrumental in promoting the intersection between wine, art, culture, music, and the sort of joie de vivre that she carried with her throughout her final years. Indeed, as her late husband Robert Mondavi was changing the way that American wine was perceived not just in this country but around the world, Margrit Biever Mondavi was working to shape its popular perception as part of the so-called good life, every bit as much an expression of culture and place as any other artistic endeavor.

Genevieve Janssens, Director of Winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery since 1997, pointed out shortly after Mondavi’s death that “Margrit Mondavi was the Grande Dame of the Napa Valley, shaping the valley’s wine, food, music and art culture—what she referred to as the gracious life—in the same way that Mr. Mondavi shaped the wine industry.” Her influence continues to be felt today, most acutely at the winery itself, with its revolving art installations and regular concerts, but also throughout the Napa Valley, where so many of the larger wineries have followed in her footsteps and become cultural hubs in addition to places for the production of wine.

Mary Weber Novak, following the death of her husband Jack Novak in 1977, found herself a single mother of five children and the sole proprietor of the family’s estate, the land for which they had initially purchased just five years earlier. Despite her loss, she quickly turned Spottswoode into a much sough-after source of grapes for other winemakers around the Napa Valley and then, in 1982, a producer of excellent wine in its own right.