Rick Rainey is a Florida native who moved to the Philly burbs in his formative years, hanging out with friends in the West Chester/Exton area and eventually graduating from Downingtown High School.

After working in his parents’ deli in Villanova for a couple of years, he moved to Manayunk “back before it was cool,” and then ended up in Philly working at the Ritz Carlton Hotel before moving to the Finger Lakes in the mid-1990s to make wine. In the midst of that timeline, he took a job with Winebow , an importer and distributor, as a sales rep and later a French wine buyer, spending weeks there.

That position led to his meeting Louis Barroul, his eventual partner in creating and opening Forge Cellars along Seneca Lake in 2011. For Barroul, making wine was in his DNA, the latest of 14 g

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