The story of Ardiri, the winery’s name, begins in 2006, shortly before the winery was purchased from the Andrus Family Trust. Our small vineyard in the Carneros AVA region of the Napa Valley had that year provided several tons of Pinot Noir grapes needing a winery in which to be processed into wine.

The wine would need a separate label, and John and Gail were tasked with selecting an appropriate name and design for the new wine label. They both sensed that the label should reflect and illustrate the structural and genetic instability so characteristic of the Pinot cultivar that has led to the many clones. They accomplished this by adding a stylized double helix to the label, the now universally recognized genetic image of DNA.

The name, however, required further thought. Because this was a new venture for both of them, John and Gail sensed that they were taking a significant risk. After all, their conventional day jobs were unrelated to wine making or grape growing. Wanting to select a name to reflect the Italian background of them both, John’s Sicilian heritage and Sicily’s unique dialect lent itself to differing expressions, unique from the Northern Italian language spoken by Gail’s grandparents.

Gail identified the Sicilian noun “Ardiri” and discovered its meaning related to “Risk” or “Taking a risk”. However, “Ardiri’s” other meaning, when accented uniquely, derived from the Latin word for “Incendiary”, means “consumed by fire”.

So the name Ardiri, depending on the accent, means either “taking a risk” or “being consumed by fire”. This double meaning was very appealing and a seemingly fateful discovery. In many ways the name as selected was most appropriate, as all life’s endeavors require some risk. At times, however, the risk consumes us in the unexpected flames of emotion and life’s many challenges. So the name “Ardiri” survived the multiple iterations of label design and ultimately resulted in our current “Ardiri” label.