Dida’s Distillery

In 1906, owner and distiller Allan Delmare’s Great-Grandfather Paul Mariani (“Dida”, pronounced “did-uh”, and Croatian for “Grandfather”) immigrated to California from Croatia and began farming. His passion and hard work became a multi-generational legacy, eventually leading to the creation of the Mariani Fruit Packing Company; an enterprise still owned and operated by Delmare’s family today. In 1996, after learning of a budding wine scene in Virginia, the California winery was sold and Rappahannock Cellars was built. In 2015, the next generation of products was created through the art of distilling: 100% grape-based spirits. Aged and clear spirits alike, each product is a concentrated expression of Dida’s ultra-premium craft wines: the highest quality grapes are pressed and fermented into intense wines, then small-batch distilled in a custom 100 gallon pot/column hybrid copper still – something Delmare knows would make Dida proud.