Vault Field Vineyards
• In Kinsale. In the middle section of the Northern Neck, a little more than two hours from Washington. Opened in 2010. Owned by Keith and Joanne Meenan, who moved here from Calvert County, Maryland. The website lists their dogs and cats as additional owners. Not open in the winter.
• Wine. Tier II. Won a silver medal and two bronze medals at the state-wide Virginia Governor’s Cup wine competition. Reds are light except for the Reserve Red. Almost all the wine is from estate produced grapes.
• Setting. Small place with no formal tasting room. Vault Field was given a beautification award by the Gardening Club of the Northern Neck. Wine tasting is low cost.
• Stories. One star. The Age of Plantations and Robert E. Lee. In the history of Virginia (see the longer “Virginia – A History through Wine-Colored Glasses), the late 17th and early 18th centuries saw the major turn from the survival-focused early years of European settlement to the booming plantation-based economy which characterized Virginia through the Civil War era and beyond. The land and proximity to water-based transportation made the Northern Neck an excellent location for the planting of tobacco. Many rich planters developed this area, and built expansive houses at the center of their landholdings. During the Colonial period, the Northern Neck was referred to as the “Athens of the New World” because of its collection of rich landowners dedicated to learning, gentlemanly society, and civic duty (see Virginia’s Lost History, from a 2012 New York Times article). One of the major plantations, Stratford, was the home of the Lee family, one of the richest and most influential families among Virginia’s colonial aristocracy. Robert E. Lee, who became the General in charge of the Confederate army in the Civil War, was born at Stratford in 1807. The NYT article describes it as enticingly as possible:
The Lees’ ancestral great house — an imposing H-shaped structure noted for its elegantly laid brickwork facade, high chimneys and a cube-shaped great room acknowledged as among the handsomest chambers in the United States — was built on a rise commanding a broad and strategic view of the Potomac, and was just a short walk along a farm road from my cabin in the woods. There are many such houses here, salted away on the Neck, and seemingly forgotten by all but their caretakers or inhabitants. There are scruffy graveyards scattered with the tumbledown headstones of neglected worthies. There are remnants of terraced boxwood parterres and early brick orangeries.
Stratford is located near Lerty, in Westmoreland County, half an hour north of Vault Field Vineyards. A good stop either on the way to or from a winetasting. One can make an evening of it as well and stay at the Inn at Stratford Hall nearby.