Sabin Wine Journeys

October 25, 2023.   Throughout the year we often find ourselves saying how lovely a winery’s view must be during the Fall foliage season - there are so many places worth a revisit with killer overlooks or views across a gap in the mountains.   This year we tried to time a visit to the Monticello AVA to coincide with the peak of Fall Foliage.   The Blue Ridge at this time of year is much less of the muted blue you see in the summer, and more like being dappled in sand or ochre.   The summer of 2023 was brutally hot and took a toll on the vividness of the leaves this fall.   But even so, when you see the individual trees close along the by-ways as you drive, you see all shades of yellow – from butter to golden delicious, from gold to butternut.   Then trees running ochre to dull brown, and from scarlet to brick red to rust.   How much more startling is a bright red gum tree when it is framed by golden poplars.   Our first stop on this Autumn excur...

[On October 13, 2023, I had an extended conversation with Kirk Wiles at Paradise Springs Winery in Clifton.   I did not electronically record the conversation.   This post is a paraphrase of the conversation using my notes of the visit.   I have tried as much as possible to be faithful to what was said and the tone in which it was conveyed.   We are thankful to Kirk for his time and candor.] October 13, 2023.   It was a picture-perfect fall day for a conversation on the patio with Kirk Wiles.   Kirk is the CEO of Paradise Springs Winery which we profiled on this blog in December 2022.   The focus of our conversation today, however, is on Kirk’s work with the Virginia Wine Board (VWB) where he has served as a Board member since 2015 and served as chairman from 2018 to June 2023.   For your background, the Virginia Wine Board, originally formed in 1984 and reconstituted in 2004, is an arm of the Virginia government charged with managing and dist...