An historic and revered but long-dormant name in winemaking along the Sierra Nevada foothills is being revived.

D’Agostini, which from 1911 until 1984 was the name of a winery that dated from the Gold Rush in Amador County’s Shenandoah Valley, again will appear on bottles of foothill wine, perhaps as soon as mid-April.

Robert D’Agostini, a fifth-generation relative of D’Agostinis instrumental in encouraging the modern wave of grape growing and winemaking in the foothills, is about to supplement his longtime career as a logger by becoming a vintner.

About four months ago he acquired the D’Agostini trademark. Since 1984, it had been owned by Armagan Champagne Cellars of Healdsburg. Sacramento wine broker Armagan Ozdiker bought D’Agostini Winery that year.

Ozdiker, however, declared bankruptcy in 1985, and D’Agostini Winery was reacquired by the four brothers who had owned and operated the business since the death of their father Enrico D’Agostini in 1956.

In 1989, Leon and Shirley Sobon, as a 30^th wedding-anniversary present to themselves, bought D’Agostini Winery, rechristening it Sobon Estate. (In 1977, the Sobons had established the winery Shenandoah Vineyards, which they also continue to own.)

The Sobon purchase, however, didn’t include the D’Agostini name, which Ozdiker retained, though he never took much advantage of it.

Robert D’Agostini, pondering a possible move into winemaking, retained an intellectual-property attorney to look into the matter, found that the D’Agostini trademark was available, and grabbed it.

“Now I needed a winery,” he says.

Charlie Spinetta with winery cat, a few years ago just outside his Shenandoah Valley winery.

Coincidentally, another logger-cum-vintner, Charles Spinetta, was looking for a buyer for his family’s eponymous winery, also in Shenandoah Valley, and not far from the original D’Agostini Winery.

The sale, which closed Friday, includes the 5,000-square-foot Spinetta winery, its 5,800-square-foot tasting room and art gallery, a 4,600-square-foot crush pad, and 29 acres, of which 12 are planted to Zinfandel and Barbera.

Spinetta had listed the property for $3.9 million, and indicated he got close to what he was asking. He and his three sons will retain residences and 60 acres of wine grapes on neighboring parcels.

Spinetta, who holds a degree in forestry from the University of California, Berkeley, was logging in the foothills when he began to transition into grape growing in the mid-1970s. By 1984 he had moved into winemaking, initially selling wines out of a small red barn alongside his vineyard, early on planted extensively to an anomaly in the foothills, Chenin Blanc, but he was fond of Chenin Blanc.

He never lost his affection for Chenin Blanc, but it played less of a role in the growing success of Charles Spinetta Winery than his traditionally dry and husky Zinfandel, Barbera, Primitivo and Petite Sirah.

However, despite the perception that the American wine consumer was becoming more smitten with dry wines, Spinetta recognized and capitalized on the enduring appeal of sweet wines, and proudly boasted that the backbone of his output were wines “sweet and yummy.” He was correct, and wine tourists flocked to his tasting room.

By 1996 the winery had moved into spacious quarters along Steiner Road, and Spinetta was recognized not only for sweet wines and characteristic and reliable dry wines but the original wildlife art of his labels, an art gallery on a mezzanine overlooking the tasting room, and his generosity on behalf of numerous programs and services in Amador County.

“I’ve spent 40 years of my life here, but I feel real good about it,” says Spinetta of the sale. “I’m 82. It’s time to move on and do nothing.”

For his part, Robert D’Agostini sees the purchase as an opportunity to pick up where Enrico D’Agostini and his four sons left off – providing everyday wines of substance and value. “This is a case of one old Italian family handing off to another old Italian family,” says Robert D’Agostini of the transition.

One of the original D’Agostini jugs of Reserve Burgundy.

Initially, Robert D’Agostini will take advantage of wine included in the sale for releases under his own family name. Jim Spinetta, one of Charles Spinetta’s three sons, will stay on as consulting winemaker. D’Agostini has a son, Lucas, studying viticulture and enology at UC Davis, and a daughter, Daisy, a graphic artist already involved in preparing to market the wines.

Robert D’Agostini’s great-grandfather, Antonio D’Agostini, was a cousin to Enrico D’Agostini. Antonio was living in Fernley, Nevada, growing hay and helping construct Lahontan Dam when Enrico was establishing himself as a Shenandoah Valley grape grower and winemaker. With the dam built, Antonio began to ponder a move elsewhere. Enrico suggested he consider California’s Sierra foothills, in large part because more than Fernley it evoked memories of the family’s historic homeland, the commune Casalvieri in the Italian region Lazio, about 70 miles southeast of Rome.

Antonio concurred, and in 1924 he made the move, acquired property adjacent to his cousin’s spread, and began to cultivate vineyards and orchards.

This was little more than a decade after Enrico and a couple of partners had bought Adam Uhlinger’s vineyards and winery and rechristened the property D’Agostini. Until his four sons sold the site in 1984, D’Agostini continued to turn out wine virtually uninterrupted, despite the exodus of gold prospectors as mines closed, infestations of pests, economic turmoil, wars and Prohibition. The D’Agostini brand was celebrated for offering reliable, high-value wines based on such traditional grape varieties as Zinfandel, Carignane, Palomino and Mission, though the wines were released under classic European names like Burgundy, Sauterne and Claret.

The Swiss immigrant Adam Uhlinger had arrived in Shenandoah Valley sometime between the mid-1850s and mid-1860s, drawn not by the prospect of finding gold but by securing his family’s future in farming. He planted vines, quarried rock and felled trees on nearby slopes, all of which he assembled into the area’s first and most enduring commercial winery. (A state historical landmark at the site, now Sobon Estate, the old Uhlinger/D’Agostini cellar transformed into a museum to showcase Shenandoah Valley’s agricultural history, attributes the founding of the winery to 1856, but the date actually may refer to Adam Uhlinger’s arrival in Amador County rather than his cultivation of vineyard and construction of winery.).

Robert D’Agostini sees acquisition of the D’Agostini brand and the Spinetta winery as his chance to resume Enrico D’Agostini’s legacy. Toward that end, he is set on reviving the one wine most closely identified with the D’Agostini name – “Reserve Burgundy,” customarily consisting solely or largely of Zinfandel. Now that “Burgundy” no longer can be used on American wine labels, having won geographic protection sought by French vintners, Robert D’Agostini will label the wine “Reserve Legacy Red.”

Bottled in 1.5-liter and 1-gallon jugs with twist-off caps, “Reserve Burgundy” was the original signature wine of the Sierra foothills, as popular in San Francisco and Sacramento as it was in Amador County during much of the latter half of the 20th century.

Some of the gallon jugs were memorable for their prominent and handy thumbhole. Though Robert D’Agostini has searched for months to find a bottle manufacturer still making a jug with a thumbhole, he has been unsuccessful. Plans now call for the signature wine to be bottled in a standard 750-mililiter bottle, but with the traditional screwcap.

If he ever finds a source for gallon jugs with a thumbhole, he will use them for his Reserve Legacy Red, but only as a novelty.

The newly designed D’Agostini package, soon to be launched.