Welcome to the D’Aquila-Phillips Wine Cellar!
Welcome to the D’Aquila-Phillips Wine Cellar, most frequently referred to simply as the DP Wine Cellar. We began operations in 1973, formally established in 1975, and launch our website today. With forty-four years of aging, we are proud of our heritage, but cognizant of the fact we are incredibly young in what we call ‘wine years’.
Our family wine making roots go back at least into the 1700s in central Italy and the village of Vinchiaturo, province of Campobasso, district of Molise, Italy. I’m dead certain the family was growing grapes and making wine well before my paper trail efforts begin, but that is as far as I have been able to document the genealogy of the D’Aquila portion of the DP Wine Cellar. The Phillips side of the Cellar didn’t arrive at wine until far later. Those familial roots go back to at least the 1400s in Lanteglos by Camelford, Cornwall, where drinks other than wine were more often the norm.
The story of the senior generation of our Cellar begins in 1973. It was that year when one D’Aquila and one Phillips shared their first glass of homemade wine together. It was in the basement of the home of some Italian immigrants in Virginia, Minnesota. Ensconced in the heart of the Mesabi Iron Range, (Mesabi is the Ojibwa word meaning giant.) the largest of the three iron ranges in Minnesota, Virginia was home to a small, yet vibrate and intensely tight knit Italian immigrant community. Drawn by the promise of work in the open pit iron mines of far northern Minnesota and easily outnumbered by the immigrants from England, Ireland, and Scandinavia, they nonetheless were a community, which treasured their roots, heritage, and culture. Being Italian, this naturally included winemaking! However with an average growing season of only 90 days and brutal winter temperatures dipping down as low as 60o below zero F, growing their own grapes was not in the cards for these hearty folks. This is where our first dose of fate comes into play, but more about that later. Now let’s get back to 1973.
In that basement, surrounded by family members with surnames of Casagrande, Venditti, Petosa, Cavalieri, and Brunetti, as well as D’Aquila, a rich, dry, delicious homemade red wine was shared by all. It was poured to our glasses directly from larger oak casks than I had ever seen before! Toasts were offered to good health, good fortune, and more. To a young man who thought real wine carried names such as Boone’s Farm, Pink Catawba, Annie Greensprings, Ripple, Strawberry Hill, and M-D 20-20, this was quite an amazing elixir!
In less than 18 months the joining of the lives and souls of a D’Aquila and a Phillips would be official in the eyes of the law and God. As a terrific omen, lo and behold, this union would be celebrated with the family vintner and more than 250 family and friends enjoying bottles of that same homemade, what the family lovingly yet simply called Dago Red, wine. And that wonderful juice was made with some very special grapes too! More about those grapes later on as well.
So on a lovely June day the D’Aquila-Phillips Wine Cellar was officially born.
Now you can more easily join us here on the web at http://www.dpwinecellar.com, Instagram, and Facebook.
Cheers!