When life gets in the way of vacation, you’ve always got wine. Opening a bottle and pairing it with regional foods can take you on a virtual voyage faster than you can click your heels and say, “There’s no place like the Mediterranean.” And my Spanish high heels found their way back home the minute […]

Kids are notoriously picky eaters, but when a professional chef is in control of the brown bags every day, all sorts of miracles happen —vegetables are eaten and nothing gets swapped for a bag of Cheetos. Ivy Inn’s Angelo Vangelopoulos whips up something delicious for his son, Alex. Until last year when his youngest graduated, Aromas […]

On the heels of the Virginia Wine Board’s spring announcement that viognier would be our state’s signature grape, it came as no surprise that eight of the 15 participating Monticello AVA wineries submitted a viognier as one of their four wines to be judged in this year’s Monticello Cup. But what I and the other six judges at Prince Michel Winery did find surprising last Monday was how few of the viogniers we loved.

Thank goodness I upgraded my power cord-dependent laptop to a fully mobile one earlier this year, because scribbling in my Moleskine journal would have had me ousted from the Wine Bloggers’ Conference held here two weekends ago. Anyone peeking into the Omni ballroom might have guessed it was a technology conference with most of the […]

I never need a reason to drink rosé, but I did need a reason to write about it again. “La vie en rosé” was my debut Working Pour two years ago (cue sentimental sniff here). Since then, the once-snubbed pink drink has gone from a seasonal obsession of the few to a summer wine for all.

 Grapes get their due credit when it comes to wine, but with blends, it’s all about the winemaker

I rarely take a night off from wine. But after sampling Jefferson Vineyard’s Meritage 2010 trial blends (more on that next week) on a usually hot summer afternoon, I was looking forward to refreshing my purple palate at a Virginia beer dinner at the Clifton Inn, hosted by Beer Run. Knowing that the beers would […]

 As of last Friday, wine drinkers have another cellar to choose from when dining at a restaurant: their own. The newly passed “Corkage Bill” allows restaurants with liquor licenses to serve a wine brought by a customer for a fee set by the restaurant. Legislators see BYOB as incentive for consumers to dine out in […]

Just back from a week at the beach and already I miss the ocean’s cool breeze, briny smell and salty taste. On the bright side, I’ve found a wine that captures these sun-drenched glories of summer at the beach: Albariño.

Matt Bressan’s only complaint about the pickle business is that he’s always being compared to people’s grandmothers. “Grandmothers’ recipes come up a lot when people taste my bread and butter pickles,” he says, “but they still buy mine.” Craving cukes? Nab a freshly grown few at the City Market. Fresh Crunch Pickles, which make the […]