Massena was founded by Dan Standish and Jaysen Collins. Friends since high school, the pair decided in the late 1990s to take a stab at making their own wines. Standish is a sixth generation grape grower and worked at Torbeck before starting his own Standish label in 1999. In 2000 he and Collins founded Massena and used grapes sourced from Northwestern Barossa. The pair still sources grapes, primarily Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro, though they have also started working with Barbera, Primitivo, Roussanne and Tannat. Like some other do-it-yourself winemakers in Europe, the U.S. and Australia, the pair has come up with humorous names for their wines, such as The Howling Dog, The Surly Muse, The Eleventh Hour and The Moonlight Run. Funny names or not, critics have been impressed with what’s in the bottles. James Halliday has awarded various Massena wines ratings as high as 96 pts.