By Xiyun Yang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 18, 2007

Just south of here, along President Road, is the dividing line between two worlds.

To the south is Blenheim Road, a two-lane stretch of asphalt lined with broken-down trailers and cottages yellowing in the sun. The guts and skeletons of old cars and rusted appliances are strewn across front lawns.

To the north are Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard and its real estate spinoff, Vineyard Estates. There, Patricia Kluge, businesswoman, socialite, vintner, self-described farmer and ex-wife of John Kluge, once America's richest man, has taken her brand of fine living to market.

Kluge, who said she owns 2,000 acres in Albemarle County, has parlayed her 1991 divorce settlement into row after row of grapevines, heavy with fruit in late summer and the foundation for her red, rosé and sparkling wines.

The vineyards are also the foundation for a new real estate project. She plans 24 multimillion-dollar houses on rolling hills, down the road from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland. Homeowners will have the option of owning a little vineyard of their own, tended by Kluge's wine consultants.

The houses are an extension of what she sees as a celebration of genteel country living and the development of Virginia's wine country and culture. But for the rural residents of Blenheim Road and the estate's other neighbors, the development signals the beginning of what they fear to be a demolition of their way of life.

The custom-built houses will sit on lots of three to 33 acres and cost $6 million to $20 million. Options include greenhouses, orchards, putting greens and ice-skating rinks. The houses will be energy-efficient and can be fitted with solar panels.

About half of the acreage sold will be suitable for grape growing. The homeowners can participate in as much or as little winemaking as they choose.

"We'd like to say it's for the gentlemen vintner," said Kristin Moses Murray, a spokeswoman for Kluge Estate.

Kluge, who has sold one home site so far, is hoping to take advantage of the burgeoning luxury real estate market, helped by an increasing number of wealthy people in the United States. "Luxury real estate is its own market, independent of the health" of the overall real estate market, said Thomas Anderson of Washington Fine Properties, a real estate agency that specializes in luxury sales.

Vineyard-themed properties have popped up in Italy and southern France, as well as around California's Napa Valley and on Long Island, N.Y. A gated community called Viniterra is being planned around a vineyard in New Kent, Va., east of Richmond.

"There's a growing appeal and market for vineyards," Anderson said. However, as much as people may desire fine wine and the associated lifestyle, actually running a winery can be a costly hassle, he said.

The views at Kluge Estate are stunning. From above, the hills ripple in dark and light greens and the vineyard undulates in patches of red clay soil and grapevines. Butterflies flutter low in the humidity, flashing electric blues and oranges. "Virginia's future lies in vineyards," Kluge said, and she sees her acres as not only part of that future but also a link to winemaking aspirations that stretch back to Colonial days.

"We are building a wine community, with its own brands of winemaking," she said of her real estate development.

"We hope to be a little like Mondavi was to California," added William Moses, Kluge's husband and the winery's chief executive.

Two and a half hours outside Washington, Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County have long been populated by landed patricians, heirloom farms and the rural residents who have worked for them. There, Jefferson picked the rolling hills for his country estate and founded the University of Virginia. Albemarle's sprawling tobacco and wheat plantations, averaging hundreds of acres and once farmed by slaves, have since become part-time residences for the very wealthy.

Current notable property owners include author John Grisham, actress Sissy Spacek and musician Dave Matthews, who owns a vineyard at the top of Blenheim Road.

As the Virginia wine industry and the luxury real estate market bloom, skyrocketing property values have pulled up taxes in all of Albemarle County.

Down on Blenheim Road, poorer residents are selling their appreciating land, some of them to Kluge Estate, and moving out.

"Ms. Kluge's got the money, and she can have 'em," remarked a woman who said she sold her 2.7-acre lot to Kluge Estate after her house burned down.

Nathaniel Lamb, 23, who lives with his father and his girlfriend, said his cousin up the road just sold his house and 1.5 acres for $113,000.

"Albemarle is just getting ridiculous," said Eddy Booth, 29, a miner who's raising his family in a house on Blenheim Road. "Taxes are shooting up. If they want their wineries, that's fine. Why does everyone else have to pay for it?"

While the residents of Blenheim Road worry about rising taxes, others in the region have complained that development could ruin the area's natural beauty. Three years ago, when Vineyard Estates was applying for Albemarle County approval, neighbors filed complaints and formed a preservation society.

"We just hate to see the area developed," said Milton Blackwood, a groundskeeper on one of the nearby farms. "Kluge has enough money so she doesn't have to develop her land."

"It starts off small, and the next thing you know, there's a shopping center," said Albert Graves, another local resident.

For her part, Patricia Kluge is unconcerned about the grumblings: "Like all small communities, whenever you have an idea that's different, people don't like you for it," Kluge said. "But they will get over it and one day will think it's a great idea."

From their front porch on Blenheim Road, the Pattersons have watched 55 years go by. In 1952, the Pattersons inherited their seven acres of land, cleared a patch of trees and used the wood to build their small cottage. Jane Patterson, 78, a plump woman with round glasses and snow-white hair, worked as a nurse at nearby Martha Jefferson Hospital, and her husband worked at the local sawmill. Their children went to a one-room schoolhouse down the street.

Bricks and chopped wood litter their front lawn, covered in bits of blue tarp. A punching bag hangs from a tree, its guts spilling out from opened seams. Since retiring 13 years ago, Jane Patterson and her husband have lived and taken care of their granddaughter on just their monthly Social Security and Medicare benefits.

"They want to build all these big, fancy houses," she said. "But this is a poor neighborhood, and they keep raising the taxes. Lord have mercy, Daddy." Her husband, small and wizened, sits on a cushion of yellow foam atop a green metal rocking chair and grunts in agreement.

Chester Thacker, 75, paid $31,000 for his small house and two acres of woods in the 1950s. Now his property is worth $125,000, he estimated, but annual property taxes of $800 are a strain on his monthly Social Security checks. Since his retirement from a concrete factory, he does odd jobs to earn a few extra dollars.

Like the Pattersons, he said selling isn't an option. "We're too old to go anywhere," he said, his blue eyes bright. "We die right here."