FORTY-TWO YEARS AGO, GABRIELE RAUSSE received a phone call from a childhood friend who told him he had to “drop everything and come to America.” The phone call was from one viticulturist to another. Rausse was 30 years old and working on a French vineyard. (He had been working in Australian wine, but his visa was revoked on a technicality.) His childhood friend, Gianni Zonin, was president of the Italian winemaking company Casa Vinicola Zonin.

The two had grown up together in Italy’s Veneto wine region, and their phone call forever changed the U.S. wine industry. Together, Zonin insisted, he and Rausse were going to establish the first Virginia vineyard to have commercial success growing Vitis vinifera, the species of grape responsible for fine wine. “I was worried,” says Rausse. “All I could think was, ‘My God, he’s gone insane.’”