Vint Hill: Where Cold War Meets Chilled Wine

At this Virginia winery, drink in the story, not what's in the bottle

In 1940 a dairy farmer and ham radio hobbyist in Warrenton, Virginia was surprised to discover that he was hearing cab and radio transmissions from Berlin, Germany. He reported this oddity to the U.S. Army. Within two weeks his farm, Vint Hill, was appropriated for use by the federal government. It became “Monitoring Station #1,” a covert domestic radio facility and code-breaking training center in the war effort, an was an early precursor of the National Security Agency.

The property, whose unusual geological features and precise location somehow allowed radio signals to reach it from across the Atlantic, served a similar role for 55 years, closing in 1997. (Odd fact: Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker was trained there.)

From Cold War to chilled bottles

Today the property is a mix of housing and technology companies and, curiously, Vint Hill Craft Winery, which is housed in the original Listening Post barn and includes a small Cold War museum and visitors center. It’s owned by three investors who obviously know a good "product differentiation" feature when they saw one.

The place's unique history makes it stand out from the dozens of vineyards competing for the attention of Washington-area weekenders seeking a winey day trip. It's essentially a cute retail front end for a winemaking enterprise based elsewhere. The investors are also involved with nearby Pearmund Cellars and Effingham Manor and Winery.

Listen here: It’s not the wine

Vint Hill itself is a small facility, without the farm-to-table nibblery, tricked-out picnic area, or expansive landscape to stroll and loll that many other Virginia wineries offer. There's only a quarter-acre of vines planted on the property, oddly positioned between two parking lots. (This was necessary in order to qualify for "craft winery" status, allowing Vint Hill to, among other things, sell wine by the glass. Virginia viticultural regulation is loaded with such irrationalities.)

And so like many Virginia wineries, Vint Hill buys rather than grows most of its fruit. It has some plantings around the state, but the winery buys from several Virginia farms and sources from farther afield. Some grapes are flown in via refrigerated cargo plane from Washington state and California. (This is also true at many Virginia wineries. When vintners claim "Virginia wine in every bottle" they may mean some Virginia wine in every bottle.)

Vint Hill shares a winemaker with its sister wineries, and he has his hand in other projects. This is also common in a state with 250+ wineries and only so many winemakers who understand Virginia's challenging climate, punishing humidity, unusual terroir, and finicky customers.

There are fine estate wineries in Virginia. There are strong ones with a few decades under their belts that make nationally, even internationally recognized wines. Vint Hill is not among them.

Still, it's a fun place to visit.

From war time to wine o’clock

The simple visitors' building is loaded with World War II artifacts and art, including a lot of colorful "Vargas girl"posters, racy-but-PG-rated pinups that gave soldiers courage when far from home. Forties-era model planes are suspended in the loft-like storage space that the second-floor tasting room overlooks. Allied and Axis uniforms are displayed on mannequins tucked into niches.

There are quite a few Army-issue green boxes scattered around -- vintage spyware, radios, code-breaking machines and so forth, all annotated with simple signage. If you're so inclined, you can spend an hour soaking up the history and lore even before drinking in the wine upstairs.

A taste of Vint Hill

Vint Hill's $15-for-three tastings, held in an unslick upstairs tasting room, allow you to select from about 10 reds and 10 whites. Some are named after Vargas girls, and are bottled under the Covert Wineworks label (Slogan: "You were never here"). The most interesting and pleasing to me was a Bordeaux blend, Enigma, whose constituent parts are never disclosed. (Cute, but I’ll bet those are the grapes flown in from the West Coast.)

I bought a bottle of the Petit Manseng, aka "Madison." While that is one of Virginia's most grown white grapes, due to its ability to withstand humidity, it was my first encounter. It had some nice fruit aromas and a dry backbone, but wasn’t something I’d taste again.

The rest of the wines were solidly in the "meh" to "meh-minus" range -- a Petit Verdot was really difficult to drink, a GSM blend could not figure itself out, and a Sauvignon Blanc carried a whiff of brett, a bacterial flaw that affects some cheap or poorly handled wines.

The endless war

On my way out, I stopped at the adjacent Cold War museum, a few rooms located in a former barn that also holds the winemaking equipment.

There were many more green boxes and posters. There was a stubby missile claimed to be like the one that infamously shot pilot Gary Powers out of the sky over Russia in 1960.

The docent, a retired electrical engineer, provided an unsolicited master class on topics including how codes were broken, how pre-digital computing was carried out, and how interactions between atmospheric phenomena and radio waves created military challenges and opportunities. He explained how the precise topography and geology of Vint Hill allowed it to pick up signals that others missed. Diagrams and maps were involved.

He was brilliant and amazingly well-informed. He was also hard to interrupt and get away from.

After about 15 minutes, I needed a drink.

Eat This Tip

If you’re in the area and are looking for better Virginia wine, head to Pearmund Cellars. Its website claims it’s “Virginia’s best winery.” It’s not, but it’s better than Vint Hill and has acres of vines, spacious outdoor facilities, music on the weekends, and so forth. The wine is one click up in quality from Vint Hill’s, to damn with faint praise.