Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine issue 115 | Page 18

Shifting Gears
But perhaps Andretti’s most challenging and fulfilling postracing enterprise is the winery.
Andretti says the wine bug bit him during his final year
of racing when the Louis Martini Winery produced a special
bottling to commemorate his career with an Arrivederci Mario label, selling some 20,000 cases in 1994. Andretti wrestled
with his ambition to own a winery with Joe Antonini, former chairman and chief executive of Kmart, which sponsored
Andretti’s CART series car from 1988 until his retirement in
1994. Together with Antonini, Andretti forged the Andretti
Wine Group, a publicly traded company that acquired the
acreage and built the winery. The Andretti Winery opened in
1996, pressing out some 12,500 cases.
“It was weak moment in my life,” Andretti admits. “It’s
not been easy. Trust me. The industry has had us written off
so many times, saying ‘oh they’ll give it up, they’re just playing
around with it.’ They underestimated our resolve to make this
thing work. A few people are swallowing their words.”

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Here’s more to swallow: the Andretti Winery has edged steady growth each year
since it opened and sees no signs of letting up. The winery produces wines—cabernet, chardonnay, merlot, among others--in three tiers: Andretti Selection Series,
Napa Series, and the limited Montana Series available only through the tasting room
the Andretti wine club.
Andretti bottles pinot grigio, sangiovese, syrah, and a distinctive zinfandelprimitivo, a blend of unusual pedigree. Hailing from Apulia in Southern Italy,
primitivo is so similar to zinfandel it was once thought to be the same grape. Shepherding these wines into the bottle is noted winemaker Bob Pepi, who founded the
Robert Pepi winery with his father Robert before it was sold in 1994 to the wineproducing giant Kendall-Jackson.
“Auto racing may be an all-out, push it to the limit business, but the most
intriguing quality of Andretti wines is their restraint,” wrote wine writer Andy Felts
in the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier. Indeed, the pursuit of raw speed
and the quest to craft fine wines and all of the slow-motion methodical patience it
requires seems counterintuitive.
“Sometimes passion overrides reason,” Andretti says. But never performance.