The connection to the Napa Valley began three generations ago with Dick Vermeil's great grandfathers, Garibaldi Iaccheri and Jean Louis Vermeil, who both emigrated to the United States as young men in the late 1800s and settled in San Francisco. Both were successful businessmen and struck up a friendship that would eventually include the Iaccheri family introducing the Vermeil family to Calistoga. Garibaldi and his wife made their second home in the tiny town 75 miles north of the city; a region that was reminiscent of his childhood home in Lucca, Italy. By the turn of the century, the Iaccheri family owned as much as 20 parcels of land in Calistoga. Garibaldi founded one of the first wine local wine companies, the Calistoga Wine Co, on property that would, years later, be owned by the Frediani family; old family friends of the Vermeils and current owners of the vineyards planted on that very same land.