Sabin Wine Journeys - the Virginia Wine Journeys Blog

October 27, 2025.   Four and a half years ago, Kim and I stopped by Pearmund Cellars in Broad Run, Fauquier County, and chanced into a discussion with Chris Pearmund, the hale owner and entrepreneur behind this and several other wineries in Northern Virginia.   (See our post from June 2021).   We had a great time on that visit, but they didn’t know we were coming.   Since then, we normally alert wineries that we plan to visit with them, which tends to deliver more in depth results for the blog and for your background information.   Chris was not available for us on this visit, but we had another great time speaking with servers Jamie and Jo-Jo – “the J Team” - and with executive winemaker, Mark Ward.                                                                           ...

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...