Micro-Winery in King George, VA, that procures grapes and/or juice from around the world and makes the most delicious award winning wines.
About Two Dogs Whine
The Story of Max and Diesel
It started with the car accident in 2018. Julie’s wrist was shattered in the accident and required a plate with 7 pins to hold it together. The day after her surgery, our daughter-in-law came over with a beautiful 8-week-old puppy. He walked under our cat and Julie fell in love with him. I kept trying to tell her to look at his paws and ears. They were huge. He wasn’t going to be the little lap dog she wanted. She changed his name to Max, and he fit right into our family.
One day when he was 13 months old, I was walking him around the neighborhood. A woman on the other side said that there was a dog in the shelter that looked exactly like him. I jokingly said it might be one of his brothers. Max is one of 8. Julie’s son and his wife have two of the sisters. That weekend, Julie made a comment to me that we should probably get him a friend to keep him company during the day. I told her about what the woman on the other side of the block said.
Well, we went to the shelter that Monday after work and brought Max with us. The breeder showed up with pictures to help identify if it was one of Max’s brothers. After Julie went through several possibilities of names it could have been, when she actually said his name, he perked up and was so excited that someone knew who he was. When we introduced the dogs to each other, they knew each other immediately. They were brothers from the same litter. We couldn’t leave him there. He has now been a part of our family for 7 years.
Our History with Wine
Julie and I have a passion for visiting local wineries. We’ve gone on our own and with friends. We’ve visited over 284 Virginia wineries. And through all those visits, we’ve bought so much wine. So much that our personal collection was well over 400 wines. I decided it was time to build a wine cellar in my basement. I went a bit overboard in my design. The cellar is 12 x 16 and can actually hold 1653 bottles. I needed to learn to make wine so I could fill it without going broke. I started taking lessons on how to make wine. I’ve taken 6 lessons to learn as much as I could.
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I even started making wines at home for myself and with friends for their own personal use. One time after moving 18 gallons of wine from primary to secondary fermentation, I accidentally dropped one 6-gallon carboy of Sangiovese onto another 6-gallon carboy of Cabernet Sauvignon. It made a 12-gallon red wine mess in my basement. After a few choice words and a 3+ hour cleanup, Julie told me to get the winemaking out of the house. About a year after the red wine accident, we started the process of going to the Board of Supervisors meetings to get the ordinance changed to allow for commercial wineries. Breweries and farm wineries were already in the ordinance. After 2 years of working with the Board of Supervisors and King George permitting and zoning, we finally opened the winery in June 2024.
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We love the wine culture, talking to people who love to drink wine, and visiting all the wineries and meeting the owners and winemakers. I love to talk to people about our wines. How I came up with the wines we have.
​Why do we make wine the way we do?
I learned from one of the best winemakers I’ve ever met. If you really want to learn about wine, not just how to make it, then visit Hal at Bacchus Winery down in Fredericksburg. I took 6 classes from him, and I’m still learning. But being a small commercial winery, we don’t have the space like the large farm wineries do to make large quantities of wine.
When we do make wine from grapes, it is only a small amount during harvest season. This is by no way enough wine to last until next harvest season. To compensate for this, we get juice. We get juice in one of two formats: either kit wines or juice from distributors. This provides us with a constant flow of juice to make wine throughout the year.
Why the Name, Two Dogs Whine?
When I started making wine for the house, I came up with the name “Two Dogs Wine”. Julie suggested that I put the “H” in the wine because the dogs are part Husky and they whine constantly. So as a joke, we added the“H”. Everyone loved the name so much that we decided to keep that name when we decided to open our small commercial winery.