Sabin Wine Journeys

April 13, 2025.   When Southwest Mountains Vineyards opened in 2023, it completed a little triangle of newish wineries with Keswick Vineyards and Merrie Mill Farm, all near the junction of scenic routes 22 and 231 and the crossroads at Cismont in eastern Albermarle County.   The famous Keswick Hall is a short drive south on Route 22.   While Keswick and Merrie Mills are close to average sized Virginia wineries (see note below), Southwest Mountains is the newest and by far the largest of these three with 72 acres under vine and between 16,000 and 19,000 cases annually.   We're told there is no gap in those vines. The winery and vineyard sits inside the Castalia farm estate that once belonged to Meriwether Lewis.   They renovated and expanded a 1903 pole barn into a cavernous two-storey lodge.   I call it a lodge because on the inside, this barn more resembles a large hunting lodge.  The owner, Paul Manning, appears to have spared no expense in either ...

April 12, 2025.   On our way back to Charlottesville, we decided to stop at Lovingston Winery south and west of the town of Lovingston off Route 29 in Nelson County.   Wes Roberts, his wife Tessa Riley and her parents, Bill and Shelley Riley, purchased Lovingston Winery from the Puckett Family in 2021 and with it a winery that originally opened to the public in 2003 and Josie’s Knoll Vineyard, named after Josie Stevens, whose family resided here back in the early 1900’s.   Lovingston Winery occupies a nice new barn amid the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge range.   You will drive past a barn and farmhouse area and then past the tasting room to parking in the rear.   The farmhouse used to be the tasting room when the Puckett’s owned the winery.   Now it can be rented for overnight stays and the barn is the tasting room.   Inside the new barn is one open room which would be dark if the sliding barn doors were closed.   A fireplace sits at o...

April 12, 2025.   Years ago I had a revelation in the form of a glass of Pinot Noir at a Virginia winery, and I have been seeking to relive that experience ever since.   What I know now is that revelatory wine was probably not from Virginia grapes because Pinot is a hard grape to grow, especially where the tropic and temperate zones clash in Virginia. However, there is one Virginia winery known for growing and producing Pinot Noir – and that is Ankida Ridge Vineyards northwest from the town of Amherst in Amherst County.   Christine and Dennis Vrooman bought a wooded parcel as a retirement retreat in 1999.   When the builder cleared the wrong area for their cabin, they took advantage of the mistake by consulting with noted viticulturist Lucie Morton about growing grapes in that space.   The Vrooman's had been impressed with the Cabernet Franc at Veritas.   Instead of Cabernet Franc, however, Lucie advised them that their property at 1,800 feet on a south-f...

April 11, 2025.   Old Oakencroft.  Readers of the History page on this blog may recall the name of Oakencroft Vineyard and Winery and its founder Felicia Warburg Rogan.   Oakencroft was one of the earliest Virginia wineries of the modern era.   Felicia Rogan was a New York City socialite who's third marriage was to John Rogan, owner of the Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville.   (Her first two marriages were to Robert Sarnoff, President of NBC and to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., the President’s son.)   Familiar with fine wine from her entertaining, Felicia came to Virginia in 1976 when Virginia wine was merely a dream.   She learned field work from Lucie Morton and planted her first vines in the distant past of 1978.   Their first crop in 1981 produced commercially acceptable grapes and encouraged them to open Oakencroft Winery in 1983.   The tasting room was in an old smokehouse on the Rogan farm.   Felicia was also the first chairman of t...