Sabin Wine Journeys

September 23, 2025.   Imagine you are on a curvy country road.   Forest all around.   You are ascending.   You know you are ascending by the push of your body into the back of your seat, by the strain of the car engine on the hillside, and eventually by the pop in your ears from the altitude.   You are in west Fauquier County near the town of Linden.   Soon you emerge from the forest and immediately recognize the regimented rows of a vineyard.   You are at Fox Meadow Vineyard and Winery.   Park your car above the tasting room, and you may see all different shades of blue and mist as you look back across a range from the top of Blue Mountain.   There is teal in the foreground, azure for the far mountains, and haint blue for the sky. Fox Meadow began in 2003 with Dan and Cheryl Mortland as owners and Tom Payette as the esteemed consulting winemaker.   Fox Meadow had great success in the early 2010’s, winning best red wine at the 2011 V...

March 9, 2023.   On a tip from one of our wine tasting colleagues, Kim and I celebrated our 140 th Virginia winery by driving out to the brand-new Crimson Lane Vineyards in Linden, VA.   The winery sits on a majestic ridge overlooking acres of red wine grape vines sloping down with a view across Interstate 66 and the Manassas Gap.   Sometimes the view from the tasting room will be obscured by clouds below.   The approach to the tasting room is up and down fairly precipitous rolling gravel roads. Tom and Deanna Herrity purchased the land at Crimson Lane Farm in 2014, planted their first vines in 2016 under the guidance of Lucie Morton and Steve Blias, and had their first vintage in the disastrous harvest of 2018.   In spite of that rain-drenched season, Crimson Lane managed to produce some good wine, as we’ll discuss shortly.   The winery opened to the public just a week before our visit in March 2023.   Being so new, they don’t have figures yet on...