Fact: The holiday season is the best time to gather with family, reminisce about the good times, and share a hearty meal in the company of those you love. Another fact: The holidays are about loot. Getting it, giving it, wrapping it up until your fingers bleed from giftwrap paper cuts. Unraveling a brown paper […]
Fact: The holiday season is the best time to gather with family, reminisce about the good times, and share a hearty meal in the company of those you love. Another fact: The holidays are about loot. Getting it, giving it, wrapping it up until your fingers bleed from giftwrap paper cuts. Unraveling a brown paper […]
Scorpio (October 23-November 21): In 2007 the band White Stripes did a tour of Canada. One of their final gigs was outdoors in St. John’s, Newfoundland. They came on stage, played one note—a C-sharp—and declared the performance over. It was the briefest rock show in history. Judging from the current astrological omens, Scorpio, I’m thinking […]
Afton Mountain Our tasting room is open year-round. Here you can taste our wines with our friendly and knowledgeable tasting room staff, enjoy a glass or bottle of our wine on our patio with beautiful panoramic views, or relax at a picnic table in the grass or at the Pavilion surrounded by the beauty of […]
Beer and Thanksgiving. The words conjure fond memories: an uncle asleep in the La-Z-Boy with a pile of cans on the end table; the Lions game on TV; a semi-interested crowd of family gathered around the set, making small talk. Tradition is great, but the days of discarded cans of Coors and sleepy football fans […]
Nowadays, restaurant menus are more likely to tell you where the chicken was raised than how it’s prepared. Four years running, the National Restaurant Association has voted locally sourced foods the top trend. But here in Virginia, where our soil takes a long winter’s nap, what’s a locavore chef to do when the growing season […]
In early 1986, Hospice of the Piedmont needed help with a patient who had less than a month to live. The organization’s purpose, then and now, is to care for terminal patients, but this patient had AIDS, and AIDS patients were different. By the end of 1984, there were 10 reported AIDS cases in Charlottesville, […]
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): “They will say you are on the wrong road,” said poet Antonio Porchia, “if it is your own.” I suspect you may have to deal with wrong-headed badgering like that in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. In fact, you could experience a surge of discouraging words and bad advice that tries to […]
Under construction Nothing says “holiday season” like decorating a gingerbread house. Just as it did last year, Sweethaus is offering a gingerbread workshop at its new West Main location. Drop in on Saturday, November 17 at 10am or Saturday, November 24 at 10am, noon, 2pm and 4pm, and for $25, get a pre-assembled house, a […]
It’s not all a jungle out there, and for that we should be grateful here in the red clay heart of Virginia. Ceaseless growth and decay below the equator harbors no winter sleep or spring awakening. Only deciduous forests of the middle latitudes change into seasons other than rainy or dry. In the northern hemisphere, […]
It is tempting to imagine that the resurgence of Virginia hard cider had its genesis in a single moment: Monticello’s Director of Gardens and Grounds Peter Hatch and Virginia gentleman Tom Burford kneeling together with their grafting knives to re-propagate the Virginia Hewe’s Crab apple tree in Thomas Jefferson’s north orchard.