Bottled Poetry.

Notes from Annefield Vineyards in Southern Virginia

Marterella Triumphant!

Happy news, that Marterella Winery reopened its tasting room this past weekend.  Kate Marterella won her case and received a   ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court in her dispute with the Bellevue Landowners’ Council.  That decision was handed down on 11 May 2012 by the Virginia Supreme Court.

The winery is in a rural subdivision called Bellevue Farms, governed by a homeowners association.  Covenants in the association’s governing documents require that any commercial activity on the property required the approval of a committee.  Jerry and Kate Marterella, the founders of Marterella Winery, had argued that the rules expressly permitted agriculture (with the assumption that operating a tasting room is part of that bundle of rights), and since another winery called Mediterranean Cellars already operated literally across the road, they reasonably expected approval and made a substantial investment in their winery and tasting room.  The Bellevue Landowners’ Council disagreed, and in 2008 sued to shut them down.

The case went to court in 2009, and a jury found in the favor of the Marterellas, but the judge, Fauquier County Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey W. Parker, set asided the verdict and entered in favor of the Bellevue Landowners’ Council and awarded the Council more than $100,000 in attorney’s fees, effectively shutting down their business.  A story in The Washington Post noted that in reinstating the verdict, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that

The jury had been charged with determining whether the homeowners association’s statements permitted the winery with a tasting room, whether the Marterellas relied on those statements in starting their business, and whether they incurred expense based on that, according to the Supreme Court ruling. “Nothing in the jury instructions required the jury to find that the Marterellas’ interpretation of the word ‘agriculture’ was reasonable,” or that other decisions they made were reasonable, the ruling says; that standard was ‘injected’ by the trial court.

The Supreme Court ruling reinstates the jury verdict and reverses Judge Parker’s decision and voids the award of legal fees.  What does that mean for the Landowner’s Council?  Kate informed us that it means they are responsible for her legal fees, which are in the range of $400,000, plus paying their own legal fees which are now in excess of $150,000.  Getting an award of fees is not the same as collecting, so the association will likely have to look to its members to pay these onerous bills.

The root of Judge Parker’s reason for setting aside the jury verdict goes to that interpretation of “agriculture” and in this instance, the question of whether agricultural activity at a farm includes the sale of the finished product.  The answer, mercifully, is “yes.”  Had they gone the other way and sided with Judge Parker’s interpretation, the case could have opened up a host of deviltry by neighbors who take issue with tasting rooms everywhere.  The Bellvue Landowners’ Council’s attorney characterized Marterella as a “tavern;” other jurisdictions take issue with traffic and seek to restrict them in the name of public safety.  While this decision is great news for farm wineries and gives greater clarity to the definition of “agriculture”, we must still remain vigilant and cognizant that we all need to be good neighbors.  We’ve explored this issue of control of winery activities before in posts about zoning controversies in Fauquier and Albemarle Counties, and in Santa Barbara County, California.

After that long, difficult and expensive battle, its a bittersweet victory for Kate Marterella, after prevailing in her case against the — Homeowners Association and losing her husband Jerry to Melanoma on 23 April 2012, just weeks prior to the decision being handed down.  In his memory you can donate to the Marterella Melanoma Foundation.

All of the news stories we saw reported that the winery planned to re-open its tasting room on Memorial Day Weekend.  We stopped to see Kate that day, and the place was bustling.  Show your support and stop by — but call first; their website isn’t live, and every online resource still announces that they are closed.  The only place we’ve found confirmation is on Facebook, so check there first.

Marterella Winery, 8278 Falcon Glen Road, Warrenton, Virginia 20186 (540) 347.1119


A Most Diabolical Garden.

We found time this past weekend to work in our simple little garden that fills the space between the house and outbuildings at Annefield.  We recall reading someplace that this most ancient design — the classic symmetrical four square arrangement with two cross-walks — actually represents Paradise, where the paths symbolize the four rivers rising from Eden named in the Book of Genesis: Pishon, Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates.   The form goes back to ancient Persia, where the form is called Charbagh or Chahar Bagh, and came down to us through Islamic traditions, often with a rill of water emanating from a central fountain and coursing through the center of the four paths, such as in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra at Grenada, Spain.  In these parts observers call it an “English garden,” but its much more than that — yes, the English used the form, as did the French, Dutch, Germans, Spanish and so many other cultures.  How could something so ancient and fraught with symbolism inspire something so simple?

A few weeks ago Adrian Higgins wrote in The Washington Post about an elaborate classically inspired garden in Orange County, Virginia, at a place called Mount Sharon that the owners were opening to the public the weekend of Mother’s Day.  The closing paragraph was quite striking:

I too like the urn terrace, whose floor of turf and walls of hedge bring the eye to the plump and ornate stone urn held like a Faberge egg in its space.  But the power here is in the crafting of the void, the negative space around the urn.  It brings home the idea that Mount Sharon is, at heart, about sculpting the air.

The poetic phrase “sculpting the air” reminded us of a place we saw in Portugal a few weeks ago, where long dead artists sculpted ground under a magical garden into the very antithesis of this notion at the gardens at the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal.

The Quinta da Regaleira

Sintra is a Romantic, strange and mysterious place, with its palaces and palm trees dotting the mountains.  On our second day in Sintra we visited the Quinta da Regaleira, the summer residence of the family of Antonio Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920), who acquired the property in 1893 and commenced an elaborate building scheme unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.  Antonio Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro was a capitalist born in Rio de Janiero — a graduate in law from the University of Coimbra, he was a distinguished bibliophile, collector and philanthropist.  The main house is in the French neo-gothic style, designed by theatrical designer Luigi Manini (1848-1936), who also designed the extensive gardens beginning in 1898.  They worked together for 12 years.

The garden is ambitious, and it succeeds.  Even the most rudimentary garden is an expression of man’s dominion over nature, and ironically when they aren’t maintained, its laughable how quickly nature reclaims it, but this garden was conceived as the representation of the Cosmos, with imagery depicting the quest for paradise and mundus inferus, the metaphysical quest for being.

Imagine Dante’s Inferno, as Dante followed Ariadne’s thread so one can make the way back from the underworld.  Each garden feature is a stop on the initiate’s journey along the way to the vera peregrinatio mundi where you are to experience the Harmony of the Spheres.  The gardens present the metaphysical quest for enlightenment that is found in the great epics.  Symbolic objects throughout incorporate refences to Greek mythology, the works of Virgil, Dante, Milton and Luís de Camões.  It doesn’t stop there, for it also includes references to the mission of the Knights Templar (who, according to legend, were the keepers of the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant; the order was disbanded in the 14th century) and its successor order in Portugal, The Order of Christ; and the writings and work of great mystics and magicians, such as the alchemical treatise, Ars Magna by Ramon Llul (1232-1315).  Heady stuff.

Close to the house are several formal gardens; one, called the Promenade of the Gods, is an avenue linking the Pisoes Loggia to the main house and features statues of classical gods such as Fortune, Orpheus, Venus, Flora, Ceres, Zeus and the like.  From there the garden reveals itself as one explores an increasingly confounding series of mysterious places.

The most striking feature in the garden is the most diabolical, one hidden from view — the Initiatic Well, a subterranean tower that sinks 99 feet into the earth but is open to the sky and ringed by a monumental spiral stairway, along which are 22 niches that symbolize the 22 major Arcana of the Tarot.  A series of tunnels link this space to other features in the garden: the Unfinished Well, the Lake of the Waterfall, the Grotto of the East, and the Portal of the Guardians.  This last entrance fronts on a ceremonial plaza defined by twin towers and a fountain, directly opposite the Terrace of the Celestial Worlds.

Boca do Inferno — The Mouth of Hell

The afternoon before we stopped to see another mysterious place near Sintra at Caiscais, where we visited the Boca do Inferno — “the Mouth of Hell,” a site renowned for the otherworldly, booming noise that rises from the waves as the the water crashes into the rocks.  We spied a small white plaque mounted on rock that referenced Aleister Crowley and the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa — there was no English translation, but we noted the word “suicido.”

This is an intriguing and obscure find, and after some research learned that the mystic and occultist Aleister Crowley, an early 20th century mystic and occultist (some think he was a madman) had visited the place and created a scandal.  In 1930 Crowley visited Mr Pessoa in Portugal, and Pessoa helped Crowley the fake his own suicide, which included a suicide note left at the Boca do Inferno.  Pessoa even told the press that he’d seen Aleister Crowley’s ghost the day after his supposed suicide, when Crowley was actually in Spain enjoying the media scandal his prank generated.

Crowley is best known today as the creator of a Tarot deck he called The Book of Thoth; he designed them, but the images were painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943.  The deck remains in print.  Like the garden at the Quinta da Regaleira, it incorporates symbols from every conceivable tradition.  Given his interests, one would expect Crowley to be drawn to a place called Boca do Inferno.  It’s a shame that Montiero died 10 years prior to Crowley’s visit to Sintra; had they met, no doubt they would have had a lot to talk about.


Our Very Own Parthenon: Berry Hill.

 

Berry Hill. There are lots of Berry Hills in Virginia — there’s a vineyard and winery of that name in Flint Hill (they have a great disclaimer on their website: “WARNING: Continued consumption of wine may lead to sophistication, cultural awareness, worldly concerns, youthful ambiance and possibly severe happiness”); a town near the North Carolina line; there’s a Berry Hill Road in Orange, but on Sunday last we were at the Berry Hill Resort in South Boston for a meeting of the Southern Virginia Wine Trail Association. The resort is housed in in one of the finest Antebellum Greek Revival houses in America, the majestic Berry Hill, built by James Coles Bruce (1806-1865), who began construction in 1833.

Mr Bruce was devised the property by his father, James Bruce (1763-1837), who had purchased it from Isaac Coles; the mansion is actually an addition to the existing Coles house. Mr Bruce is said to have been helped with the plans John E. Johnson, the great architect of the Gothic period who later designed Staunton Hill for his half-brother Charles Bruce.

Said to be modeled after the Parthenon, the Doric portico features a perfectly proportioned pediment on eight massive brick columns that have been stuccoed and fluted. The walls are three feet thick and also stuccoed (with the exception of the rear wall), believed to be part of the original house. Granite for the floor and steps of the portico and the window sills came from the plantation quarry; the stone used for door frame was imported from Georgia.

The mansion is flanked by the plantation office and the school room, four-columned miniatures of the “big house” that face each other across the wide, circular drive. They, too, are original, having been built in 1770, and remodeled.

The entrance hall features a breathtaking pair of floating stairs that curve along the walls and meet on the second story. Behind the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a fireplace on axis with the door, though now it is used as a billiard room. To the left of the hall is a pair of drawing rooms, both having impressive deep Greek Revival cornices decorated with water leaf moldings. The drawing rooms also contain fine marble Empire-style mantels with caryatid supports.

When you visit Southern Virginia, there is no better headquarters for a tour of the SoVA Wine Trail. The resort includes two restaurants, Carrington’s (reservations recommended) and Darby’s Tavern (no reservation required), which happily serves lunch on Saturdays. But those aren’t the only amenities, which include tennis, hiking, biking, fishing, horseback riding and hayrides; an indoor pool and high-end European-style spa; and weekend wine-tasting and cooking packages. Nearby are two other fine restaurants, Molasses Grill in Halifax and and Bistro 1888 in South Boston. One can have quite a sophisticated culinary weekend there.