Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine issue 115 | Page 12
Top: Mario takes the checkered flag at the 1969 Indianapolis 500.
Indianapolis Speedway Museum
Right: Atop the podium at the 1978 French Grand Prix with Ronnie Peterson and James Hunt.
success levels high at the Mario Andretti Racing School in Las Vegas and the Andretti Indoor Karting and Games facility near Atlanta. And he especially zeros that
acumen in on the Andretti Winery.
Couched on fifty-two acres in California’s famed Napa Valley, the Andretti
Winery has defied the expectations and predictions of some in California’s wine
industry establishment, who dismissed the winery as an Andretti plaything, predicting he would quickly get bored with it and let it wither. Then in June 2006 the winery turned its first profit smack dab on the date of the winery’s tenth anniversary.
It has been profitable ever since. Question: How can you possibly apply Andretti’s
famous speed quote to vineyard tending and barrel aging?
“When you reflect on it, it applies to life in general, at least the business part
of life,” he insists. “You have to continuously be pressing the edge of the envelope
in order to get results.”
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Early Ambitions
Ironically — or maybe not so - the character strains that
marked Mario Andretti an international champion were
forged in the kilns of destitution. Andretti and his fraternal
twin bother Aldo were born in Montona d’Istria in the then
Italian province of Istria (now p