Oakencroft Farm and Winery
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...