OBITUARIES

BARON
ELIE ROBERT DE ROTHSCHILD,
9O, who
helped France’s renowned Rothschild winemaking and
banking dynasty recover from the ravages of World
War II, died August 6 while vacationing at his
Austrian hunting lodge. He had been on a hunting
trip at his lodge near the Alpine village of
Scharnitz outside Innsbruck when he suffered a
fatal heart attack. He was the second prominent
Rothschild to die this year. In June, family
patriarch Baron Guy de Rothschild died in Paris.
The family’s prestigious Chateau Lafite-Rothschild
winery, for which Elie de Rothschild began working
in 1946 after serving as an Allied soldier during
WWII, credits him with at least two of the best and
most memorable postwar Bordeaux vintages: 1947 and
1949. “After the difficult decades following the
turn of the century, and the painful period of
World War II, Baron Elie de Rothschild was
entrusted with the recovery of the estate,” the
domain said on its website. “Vintages 1947 and
1949 were rays of hope amid the hard labors of
renewal,” it said. Chateau Lafite-Rothschild
described the baron as “a major shaper of events in
the difficult reconstitution of the fine wine
market” in postwar Europe. Rothschild became a
prominent taster at wine events in London, and went
on to help found the Bordeaux Wine Guild in 195O,
before passing management responsibilities to a
nephew, Baron Eric de Rothschild, in the 197Os.
Elie de Rothschild was captured by the Germans
during World War II near the border with Belgium.
He wound up at Luebeck, one of the Nazis’ most
infamous POW camps. There, he was reunited with a
brother, Alain, and although they were Jews, they
were treated as captured officers and avoided
execution.

ROBERT
TODD WILLIAMS, 69,
aka “Dr. Toad” or just Todd, passed August 14 in
Sonoma County of heart failure. Todd, a native of
Versailles, Kentucky, founded Russian River
Valley’s Toad Hollow Vineyards in 1993 with
business partner Rodney Strong. Todd started in
the bar business working everywhere from Oklahoma
to San Francisco to Jamaica. Eventually, he ended
up in the California wine business in the ‘8Os
where he built a name for himself as a tireless
advocate for small, premium producers. In 1993,
during a successful stint with his own sales
company, Hillside Estates, Todd partnered with
Rodney Strong who had just sold his namesake
winery. The two found a new project to pursue as
their retirement dream: founding Toad Hollow
Vineyards. Starting with Strong’s Russian River
chardonnay vineyard land and Todd’s sales
expertise, they released 3OOO cases of Toad Hollow
wines in May of 1994. The brand grew to over
1OO,OOO cases in 2OO7 with consistent critical
acclaim for the wines. Todd’s winery staff
remembers: “Todd’s big arms embraced everyone whom
he met. His magnanimous nature created instant
friends”.