Still Going Ahead – Our Founding, Revisited

Buongiorno ~

Our transition to new ownership last month took place, purely by chance, on the eve of our celebration of the 50th anniversary of our founding, in April, 1976. Seeing that it would be hopeless to assemble all the followers of our wines for a great celebration party, we decided to offer one of that evening’s rarest wines, Octagon 50th Anniversary Limited Edition, a blend of Merlot 48%, Nebbiolo 25%, Cabernet Franc 16%, and Petit Verdot 11%, from the 2021 vintage. This unique restatement of our flagship wine, so very warmly received at our Anniversary, will reward at least 20 further years of cellaring, and is available by the glass as of April 29th through New Year’s Eve at Palladio Restaurant and Library 1821, as well as in 750ml, and 1.5, 3, 5, and 9 liters, subject to supply.

In this message, we recall certain highlights of how we got here, to share a sense of our origins to consider when time allows. This Note will take us from our vineyard’s establishment in 1976 to 1990. A genuine second era, of equal energy and creation has brought us to the present, to be described in our Note of May.

Our 50th anniversary, like our founding itself, was filled with excitement, confidence, and determination, but we are astounded to come face to face with the great daring of those early years. Certain as I am now, that our future is every bit as bright as it was when we first opened this ground, we must acknowledge what this anniversary really celebrates – the establishment of Virginia as a great wine region, domestically and in the eyes of the world of wine – which never was known before. Along the way, we have benefitted, as we know we will in the future, by riding no coat-tails, but fashioning our own coat from the soil which is our home. (Our founder, Gianni Zonin, at left in the group in the bulldozer-tilled earth, with Gabriele Rausse, center, and a friend from Veneto, Count Cicogna, right).

We see historic achievement in the career begun here, of a single immigrant winegrower, hired by our estate’s Italian founding family as the original viticulturist and winemaker. Gabriele Rausse, who had told his friend Gianni Zonin that he would be emigrating from Veneto to a position in Australia, was providentially persuaded to come here instead. Through these 50 years, he has been helping as very few others have, to endow Virginia with its renown for fine wine. In those crucial early years at our estate, and as consultant for some 30 Virginia wineries – not to mention his own – he has been an indispensable contributor to this whole region’s fame. (Gabriele and I, at the 2006 Governor’s Cup ceremonies in Richmond.

Gianni Zonin (being greeted at Barboursville by a wild native American vine) purchased this estate in its original 18th Century configuration of some 900 acres in the same Southwest Mountain chain as Monticello, parallel to the Blue Ridge. But the full context of this fateful purchase was recounted to me by a close friend whom he told of his plan to create a winery in America, a Professor of Architecture at University of Virginia at the time, Mario di Valmarana, whose family have owned a classic villa by Andrea Palladio in Veneto since 1720 —

Gianni, you should visit Virginia, the climate and soil is quite similar to our Veneto. You could be the first to produce a good glass of wine. I also have identified a magnificent historic estate, including a Ruin of a mansion designed by Thomas Jefferson in the classic Veneto Palladian style, and perfect rolling slopes for the vines, all over the estate.
In 1976, this undertaking was met with one glaringly salient consideration. It aroused a chorus of anxious advice against the project – he would be placing at risk six generations of his family’s renown for fine wines of Italy, on extensive acreage, thousands of miles away, for producing a beverage utterly without a pedigree where it would be grown, much less a market for it. Some encouraging souls urged, Grow tobacco, instead. As history demands now, it’s impossible not to see Dottore Gianni’s venture here as that of a lone Conestoga wagon, launched to the American West. Honored for Lifetime Achievement by Wine Enthusiast in 2014, was this recognition for audacious nerve, or viticultural acumen — or for their confident overlay, and the steady hand of a wise investor?

Gianni Zonin not only brought us here. He made sure we could stay. HIs career bridges both eras of our founding. Even while expanding widely in wine production across the map of Italy, he devoted to this one North American enterprise all of the resources committed to the estates of his inheritance and acquisition.

Those who might think to value this passion by mere return on investment, have had their eyes opened by his devoted preservation of Jefferson’s Ruins; his renovation of historic dwellings for destination hospitality; his conservation of hundreds of unplanted acres in woodland, lakes, streams, wetlands, and meadows to this day; his endowment of fine dining which has been named “one of the finest and most authentic Italian restaurants in the United States,” (led to this day by Alessandro Medici, Sommelier Professionista from Bergamo, Italy); his institution of a tasting center dedicated to illustrious vintages of “library” vitality; and his patient, unremitting devotion to excellence in the development of every harvest. This estate is a culture, an organic tradition as committed to sharing the bounty of this farm as it is to our continuity.

With Gabriele’s departure to the site known today as Jefferson Vineyards, then to managing the Gardens and Grounds at Monticello itself, and planting the vineyard Jefferson wanted, we entered an interval of temporary managers and a patient search for his long-term successor. Invited to come here in 1990 after experience in the Finger Lakes, Napa Valley, and my native Italy, to conduct a study of how best to position the vineyard for the future, I found myself being offered the task of putting our conclusions into action. I’m so glad, I wasn’t bluffing. What a future now, we all share here.

Cordialmente ~

Luca Paschina Winemaker