Sabin Wine Journeys - the Virginia Wine Journeys Blog

Over the course of 2025, we posted on our visits to over 30 Virginia wineries and vineyards.     The clues below relate to some trait or feature about a winery or the owners or their wines.   It’s a testament to the uniqueness of Virginia’s wineries.  Match the winery or the person to the clue to WIN!.  For example, if the clue were "Clean Wine," the match would be Arterra Wines.   The person who gets the most correct matches to the clues by Saturday, January 10 th 2026 will get a congratulatory gift card worth the paper it’s printed on plus the stamp OR a wonderful email of appreciation.    You can post your answers to the POST A COMMENT, below: https://vawinejourneys.blogspot.com    OR If you don’t have your GOOGLE account and password handy, you can send your answers to me on FACEBOOK.   Be sure to identify yourself for the prize. Best of Luck to You All!    Here are the Clues   CLUE ...

December 19, 2025.   Encountering Jason Murray – owner and winemaker at Arterra Wines – must be what it was like to meet a passionate disciple of a new faith.   The faith in question is “clean wine,” and his pursuit is in hostile territory, so goes the received wisdom.   All shall be explained. First, some preliminaries:   Arterra Wines is to be found between Interstate 66 and Route 17 (Winchester Road) in the northwestern part of Fauquier County.   It has a Delaplane address.*   Sandy and Jason Murray purchased the property from Bob and Phoebe Harper (of Naked Mountain) in 2014 making the Murray’s in a sense the second generation of Virginia winemakers.   At purchase, the land was completely wooded, and the Murray’s have since hacked out an 8-and-a-half-acre estate vineyard from the hilly forest.   The A-frame lodge that holds the winey and tasting room opened in 2015.   It seems to rise organically from the hillside while remaining largely ...

December 19, 2025.   While it’s not by design, we visited several old Virginia wineries this year that have embarked on new chapters in their lives.   Oakencroft outside of Charlottesville is under new management with new construction and re-purposed original infrastructure (April 2025).   There was Shenandoah Vineyards in Edinburg, which began in 1976 but whose future as a working vineyard under its current owner is uncertain (July 2025). Naked Mountain Winery and Vineyards is another old Virginia winery – operating handsomely in Markham, Fauquier County, since it opened in 1982.   Former owners Bob and Phoebe Harper first planted vines in 1976 and added acreage in 1980 and 1994.   In 2010, the Harper’s retired from the wine trade and sold Naked Mountain to Randy and Meagan Morgan.                                                    ...

November 15, 2025.   The area near Lovettsville around the crossroads of Taylorstown in northern Loudoun County is replete with stone farmhouses and stone barns whose walls and foundations contain the memories of plowing up endless rocks from this exhausting landscape so many years ago.   And tucked into one of those fields behind the derelict, mustard-colored Taylorstown general store, down a gravel driveway is Tedd Durden’s Creek’s Edge Winery.   Tedd and his family began planting grapes in 2009 with a plan to sell grapes to local wineries.   However, in fairly short order, they decided to make their own wine instead.     Tedd applied his background in the construction industry to build the three-storey wine production facility and tasting room and opened it for business in 2014.   We visited Creek’s Edge in 2016 and noted the wide field that slopes down to the edge of the Catoctin Creek.   The Furnace Mountains form a gentle horseshoe around th...

November 15, 2025.   We can easily forget how rough and ready our region has been in its history.   Out west in Loudoun County, for example, back in colonial times, the old Carolina Road was the main trade route that ran from Fredrick, Maryland through Leesburg and ended in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina (today, a prime wine producing area for that state).   Unfortunately, cattle thieves and highwaymen so frequented the road that it was called “the Rogues Road.”#   Cheryl and Mike Morrison started Rogues Hill Vineyard in 2012 and changed it the next year to the more obscure “Terra Nebulo,” which they translate as “Land of the Rascal” to commemorate this area outside of the town of Waterford for its history of banditry.   The Morrison’s opened Terra Nebulo in 2015.   The winery is contained within a reproduction of an old hay barn, constructed with great care by Amish craftsmen.   The barn sits in a hollow framed by tall grass and a view of a large...

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.                                                                           ...

October 26, 2025.   Brent Manor Vineyards is one quick turn from northbound Route 29 in Nelson County onto the winery driveway and up an abrupt hill to the tasting room.   From the ridge where the tasting room is situated, the view is southeasterly, encompassing a sweep of red and burnt orange mountain foliage and the town of Faber in the distance. Jorge and Tracie Raposo had been looking for property to build on for some time before Brent Manor came on the market in 2009.   Jorge emigrated to the United States from Portugal as a child in the 1980’s but tells me that Nelson County doesn’t remind him of his native land – he Tracie just love it on its own.   Jorge and Tracie built a career in insurance.   As if those jobs weren’t demanding enough, they built a tasting room and processing facility and opened for business in 2015.   They completed construction of a separate event building in 2023, but for the foreseeable future, says Jorge, that building will...