Jada Vineyard came into being in 1999 when fields of golden barley were planted over to grapevine by the Messinas, second-generation Italian immigrants from Brooklyn, NY who traveled to Paso Robles as one of the pioneering families of the Westside. Their ambition was to establish a small, sustainable estate vineyard that would produce world-class Rhônes and Bordeauxs. By 2005, Jack Messina, the original founder, had named his 55-acre estate, Jada. Today, the Riboli Family, from Piedmont, Italy, continues this pioneering tradition and ambition to produce only the best organically farmed, estate wines.
Jayden means “thankful one” in Hebraic and “jade” in Eastern cultures represents “perfection, constancy, and immortality”. These traits embody the values and purpose that go into making the Jada wines. When my family purchased this land 22 years ago, we had a “small, big dream” – to produce some of the most sought-after wines in the world and all from our estate vineyard. We never wanted to be the biggest, just to only use the best from our organically farmed vineyard in each Jada wine. That mission remains true today with the Riboli Family.
“Terroir” is an overused term that can imply different things for different producers when we talk about expressing it in our wines. For Jada, however, it literally refers to the fact that we make wine from land we have lived on and worked on for over two decades. It’s a unique and special bond we have with our pocket of hills off the Santa Lucia Coastal Range in the Willow Creek District of Paso Robles and something we express in each of the Jada wines.
This bond underscores our respect for the land and the wines we make. That respect extends to the amount of wine we make each year. We believe excellence is found in the small, sustainable things of this world – small batches of carefully crafted wines, a small team of winemakers who fret and focus over every detail from the vineyard to the winemaking, and a small, family-run winery with a knowledgeable crew of Wine Educators with a similar passion for limited production, estate wines.
All this attention to detail should reinforce our singular goal, often summed up by my father in one phrase: “Our wines should be so darn good, you keep coming back to them year after year.” We feel you and the special people in your life deserve nothing less from us.
