Barboursville Vineyards Winery

Defying the unanimous advice of government officials, land owners, and bankers to plant tobacco at Barboursville, Gianni Zonin -- 6th generation heir to a family wine enterprise active since 1821 in the Veneto -- acquired this plantation in 1976 with the seemingly ridiculous expectation of creating a vineyard. Jefferson had attempted this, persistently into the 19th Century at Monticello, always failing to achieve a single harvest. In 2006, on the occasion of celebrating the winery’s 30th anniversary as “setting the standard” for a region now populated by more than 100 vineyards, Gianni and Silvana Zonin opened a new wine museum at Barboursville, looking back upon centuries of Italian viticulture, and a barrel aging room for Octagon, where the history of their creation of the estate that gave birth to a new wine region is laid out upon the walls in illustrated chapters, culminating in the validation of Octagon, itself, as the crowning achievement of Virginia viticulture.

 



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