Sabin Wine Journeys

February 1, 2025.   Morais Vineyards and Winery is a surprising outpost of Portugal off Route 17 in Bealton, Fauquier County.   José Morais opened the winery and wedding venue in 2011 promoting traditional Portuguese wines and winemaking.   His daughter, Linda, is now CEO.   Their winemaker, Vitor Guimarãis, is from Portugal - born and educated - and has been with them since the beginning.   Drive through the newer part of the vineyard adjacent to the road, and for the moment, drive straight ahead past the round tasting room into the courtyard a typically stark-white Portuguese villa which serves as a large wedding venue.   The main building, – ballroom, bar- and smaller outbuildings buildings host over 100 weddings a year.   It’s like a little village.     Our focus, however, is on the wine and we came back to the tasting room, a round stand-alone building with a cone-shaped roof, reminiscent of the roofs in Algarve.     ...

February 1, 2025.   Mitchell Harrison knew he was hearing something unusual.   A dairy farmer in rural Fauquier County, Harrison was listening to his HAM radio in the early 1940’s and overheard police radio transmissions – from Berlin, Germany.   Harrison informed the Government.   Shortly after war broke out, he got one of those offers you can't  refuse and sold the whole 700 acres of his Vint Hill Farm to the U.S. Army.   Rumor has it that Vint Hill Farm sat on top of a massive deposit of iron ore that acted as a natural antenna for broadcast reception.   By 1942, the Army established a major signals intelligence site at Vint Hill from which they could intercept Axis radio traffic.   Supposedly one such transmission detailed the Nazi’s Normandy fortifications and proved useful to the Allied Invasion on D-Day.   Through the next decades, Vint Hill continued in the spook world as an intelligence station until its functions were transfer...

May 25, 2024.   Hello Readers!   It has been a while since we last posted.   We have been doing some traveling out of state, but we’re back!   We used a warm morning on the Memorial Day weekend to revisit one of the great Virginia wineries with some friends – Linden Vineyards - which is a few minutes south of the crossroads that constitute the town of Linden in western Fauquier County.   During our visit we spoke with owner and founder, Jim Law, and his son-in law, Alex Wilde, who poured for us.   Thanks to both of them for their time.   Much has been written about Linden over the years, and much by Jim Law himself.   A native of Ohio, Jim got a start in agriculture in the 1970’s when he served as an agricultural volunteer with the Peace Corps in Africa.   He loved working with fruit crops and on returning to the States, with wine and growing grapes.   His first experiences in the grape field came in Indiana but there was no mark...