Terra Savia: A brief history

We imported our Tuscan olive trees in 1998 as small sticks with barely a few leaves and totally soil-less. After three very stressful days of trying to get the plants out of customs, we rallied our family to help us get them into soil as quickly as possible. Of the initial 6,000 plants, only about 2500 survived. Indeed it was not a good success rate, but we were quite happy that we had enough to create the beginnings of a beautiful orchard by 1999. And, we did not know it then, but, having the seedlings survive their tough journey from Calenzano, Italy was only the beginning. We spent a couple of years on midnight and 4:00 am patrols, chasing deer and wild pigs, who routinely conducted their own orchard patrol. We finally got smart and built a deer fence.

By 2004, when we were able to produce our first oil, we took it home and bottled it as quickly as we could. With much excitement we proudly handed it out to family and friends. Their feedback…ughhh, this oil is so bitter…and our response as proud parents of a labor of love… yeah! Isn’t that great? That’s because it is so fresh! The overall recommendation was to slow down and let it settle, so that it would be more pleasing and acceptable for the average palate.

In the meantime, we had been looking for a small piece of land, where we could build our pressing facility. We always envisioned that we would be able to oversee the entire process, from the field to the finished bottle. We got quite lucky and were able to find a place to build that was nearby the orchard. In the process, we also acquired a small 37 acre vineyard. The property had been in the Milanos family, for three generations. Jim Milanos knew the vineyard like the back of his hand. He cared so much for the land which he farmed that he had already obtained certified organic and fish friendly status. Milano Winery won a number of awards producing wine from this very same vineyard.

Our Wildlife series Chardonnay won a gold medal at the 2009 Mendocino County Fair and Silver at the 2008 San Francisco Wine Competition. With this wine, we wanted to portray Chardonnay as it truly tastes when grown on the bench lands of Mendocino County’s inner Russian River Valleys. Our Petit Verdot has won Silver and the Cabernet won Bronze at the Sonoma County Grand Harvest competition. We are quite pleased with our efforts thus far given that the Terra Savia brand is young. We are looking forward to more medals to come as we develop our mission of making great quality wines that can be sold at fair and reasonable prices.