Picture yourself in the Jacuzzi spa on your back deck, sipping barbera from Jacuzzi Family Vineyards.
Know what? They come from the same family.
It all started when the Jacuzzi siblings, Franc-esco, Rachele, Valeriano, Gelindo, Candido, Giocondo and Guiseppe, left Italy's Friuli region and emigrated to America over the first decade or two of the 20th century.
Clever inventors, the Jacuzzis quickly turned out a new airplane propeller that was adopted by the U.S. Army. They then adapted the propeller into a jet pump able to pull up water from the region's deepest wells.
Fast-forward to 1956, and Candido's son, Ken, suffering from arthritis, is told by doctors that he needs hydrotherapy. The family modified their jet pump into an indoor tub with rushing water to soothe his aching joints.
Thus was born the Jacuzzi spa in which you're sipping barbera.
Where does the wine come in? Valeriano always made a few barrels of wine for family and friends. It might have ended there, but grandson Fred Cline, who grew up watching him crush grapes, used a $10,000 inheritance to found Cline Cellars, a 350-acre winery in Sonoma's County's Carneros district.
At Cline Cellars, he made a lot of zinfandel, plus French varietals like chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot, carignane, mourvedre, syrah, viognier and pinot gris. And in 1991, to honor Valeriano, Cline and his wife, Nancy, started making Jacuzzi Family wines at an 18,000-square-foot winery beside Cline Cellars.
At their Jacuzzi property, the Clines make pinot noir and merlot, but mainly old Italian varietals like arneis, an ancient white from Italy's Piedmont region; primitivo, a native of Italy's Puglia region closely related to zinfandel; and barbera, another old Piedmont favorite.
It's a complicated story, but the upshot is that wine fans have a new place to find great old Italian wines that have been pretty scarce.
Recommended
• 2010 Jacuzzi Family Vineyards Arneis, Sonoma Coast and San Benito County: light and crisp, with citrus flavors; $16.
• 2009 Jacuzzi Family Vineyards Barbera, Mendocino County: tart cherry flavors, medium body, crisp and bright; $18.
• 2008 Jacuzzi Family Vineyards Merlot, Sonoma-Carneros: black cherries and dark chocolate, soft acids and tannins, smooth and round, $16.
• 2009 Jacuzzi Family Vineyards Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast: black plums and chocolate, soft tannins, smooth; $20.
• 2009 Jacuzzi Family Vineyards Primitivo, Lake County: black cherries, earth and coffee, crisp, light; $18.
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