About Us:
Following a move to the East Coast in 1984, Bill arranged for grapes to be shipped from California. This “Gadino Vino,” crafted in the cellar of our home, continued to improve each vintage year. Our relatives and friends were the grateful recipients of our labor of love.
Several years later, the emerging Virginia wine market caught our attention with the ever-improving quality of a handful of new wineries. In 1989, harboring a dream of someday operating our own commercial winery, we purchased fifteen acres of land in Rappahannock County, Virginia. We began planting vines and for the next twelve years we managed the vineyard from afar as “weekend warriors”, traveling from our Fairfax home. Our commitment was truly a labor of love and determination.
We always looked forward to our yearly harvest festival when friends, family and acquaintances braved whatever the weather presented and helped us harvest several tons of grapes. We couldn’t have done it without them! The Cabernet Franc harvest from our vineyard was sold exclusively to a newly established local winery from which many medals were garnered. The rest of our harvest filled our wine cellar throughout the years as our noncommercial Echo Ridge wines. During these years we observed that the rolling land in the Blue Ridge foothills yielded fruity, spicy wines, particularly our Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.
