Ev Thomas never planned to become a winemaker. But love drew him to Italy, and there he found an old vineyard. The tale of serendipity behind Umbria’s boutique Terramante winery involves an American bootstrapping it in Europe with his Italian bride and a lot of backbreaking work—made even more dramatic by the protagonist’s age. Thomas is now 70 and not slowing down.

An Illinois native, Thomas was working in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s as an artist and a museum conservator. In 2000 and 2001, painting fellowships took him to Italy, where he visited his friend, Claudia Rizza, who had divorced and moved back to her hometown of Marsala, Sicily, with her two children.