La Famiglia di Pellegrini Vineyard He left nearly all his family behind to set out for a new life and seek the American dream. Our vines produce red wine grapes.
In about 1900 our grandfather, Adolfo Pellegrini immigrated to this country from Gragnano, a small farming community near the ancient walled city of Lucca to settle in Mason Valley along with many fellow Lucca Italians. The Italian economy of that era was suffering and the Italian government's answer was to pay young single men enough money to make the journey in hopes they would earn American wag
es and send money home to family thus boosting the economy. As a young man, Adolfo came with dreams and aspirations of making money and a life for himself in the New World. Adolfo married and raised a family in Yerington and never made it back home to the Etruscan built city of trees in his beloved motherland. Perhaps he fell in love with Mason Valley’s lush fields and forests of cottonwoods that border farms here. Young Adolfo brought a small black twelve button accordion from home and entertained Saturday night parties of fellow Italian immigrants in Mason Valley. Wine and grappa, Italian hard liquor, flowed freely and joined Adolfo in being the life of the party, as the night sky filled with familiar folk songs of Italy. Some alive today remember these parties and Adolfo’s kindness, good humor, traditional cooking, and good music, and sorely mourn its’ passing. On one early summer morning Adolfo was killed in the Reagan gypsum mine east of Yerington and forever his accordion fell silent. Today remnants of our grandfather persist against time’s unrelenting degradation. Along highway 208 at the far south end of Mason Valley as it turns toward Wilson Canyon, Adolfo once planted a row a quarter mile long of Lombardi poplar trees while employed as a farm laborer shortly after arriving to Mason Valley. You can see these trees as they greet newcomers into Mason Valley from the south and welcome back denizens who have left only to return. Adolfo had, indeed a great love of things that grow. In his name and memory, the Pellegrini family planted a vineyard and transplanted clippings of Adolfo’s Lombardi poplars to grow along the north border of the vineyard. The variety we grow is a hybrid developed in Minnesota and acquired from Double ‘A’ Vineyards in up state New York. We cordially encourage you to come visit us in the vineyard!
