At UVA, I did my third year in Madrid, Spain, and I discovered San Sebastian, a resort town on the coast near the French border that’s famous for its food. It has Michelin-starred restaurants, but my favorite places to eat there were pinxto bars. Pinxto means spike, or skewer, but it translates generally to snack, […]
On a sunny, blustery day in October, friends and fans of the four-year-old Virginia winery Lightwell Survey gathered in Waynesboro to celebrate the 2017 vintage release. Notably, a clown juggled red balls while swaying on a balance board, keeping the mood light—and slightly off-kilter. The winery’s neighbors in the complex include a concrete-fabrication facility as […]
The rain lets up all at once and the sun burns through the clouds, turning the dreary October day startlingly warm and pleasant. Clay Trainum, 58, walks swiftly along a dirt farm road behind his Waynesboro home, cutting across a 14-acre field toward a row of about 10 wooden lean-tos. The triangular structures stand at […]
On July 1, 2018, Virginia House Bill 286 went into effect, officially allowing dogs to enter winery tasting rooms. The occasion was met with no discernible reaction from one constituency: the dogs that live at wineries. • Those lucky animals need not engage in any “get your laws off my fur” protest. As vineyard owners […]
Bryant Farms and Nursery in Shipman doesn’t look that remarkable from the road: just acres of hillsides planted with young trees, their straight slender trunks forming a grid pattern. It’s not obvious, from a distance, what species is growing here. But following the gravel drive through the orchard, down into a ravine and up again, […]
Set in a field in the countryside far from the town’s population center, Barracks Road Shopping Center opened a handful of stores in 1959, anchored by a Kroger supermarket. Sixty years later, the center is the crown jewel of Charlottesville retail, hosting over 80 shops, restaurants, and experiences that attract customers from well beyond the […]
What could be better than getting out of your home office or work site for a few hours, sipping a macchiato, and getting sh*t done in a buzzy coffee shop? Luckily for us, options abound in Charlottesville. Here are our top five picks for the local java spots most conducive to that sweet #teleworklife. (Note: […]
THEN: Leggett’s, opened in 1939 // NOW: Violet Crown, opened in 2015 “Quality merchandise. Popular prices.” So went a 1954 ad slogan for Leggett’s, a department store well-known in Charlottesville—and throughout the Mid-Atlantic—for its mid-priced fashions and homewares. Leggett’s, then a privately-owned retail business, opened its first store in downtown Lynchburg in 1927. It arrived […]
Riki Tanabe opened Mochiko, a restaurant devoted to the Hawaiian food of his youth, two years ago. And while the business has grown from a farmers market stall to a food truck to a brick and mortar location, Tanabe is not resting on his laurels. “You have to be humble,” he says. “You have to […]
Valeria McFarren and Lily West met five years ago when both moved to Charlottesville, bonding as they learned their way around town and raised young children as professional women with busy husbands. Even as they prospered, McFarren, founder and principal of communications firm Chaski Global, and West, chief operating officer of the UVA Alumni Association, […]