Writer, playwright, counselor—chef Javier Figueroa-Ray has worn many hats. But, to hear him tell it, cooking and poetry aren’t that different. “When I moved to the mainland, my writing muse stopped and I began cooking,” he says. “I remembered all of my family cooking and began incorporating that into the ingredients available to me in […]
Several decades into Virginia’s booming post-Prohibition wine economy, we are starting to home in on some special vineyard sites throughout the state. In France, you’ll find heavily protected and coveted Grand Cru and Premier Cru sites; in other wine-centric countries you’ll find similar infrastructures protecting the best vineyards. What sites are emerging as Virginia’s equivalent […]
It’s quite a new house—finished less than three years ago—but the home of Monique Maniet has a settled quality, as though it’s perched on this Rappahannock hillside for a long time. A collection of buildings, more “related” than “matching,” snuggles into the slope, looking like a European village. They’re accompanied by plants of many types, […]
If anyone needs an object lesson in the power of positive thinking, look no further than Katharine “Boo” Dulaney. In 2014, after she’d lived in her Western Albemarle farmhouse for 63 years, she lost her home to a fire. Did she consider moving to town, maybe a little apartment, something easy to care for? “Never […]
The charm of many old houses is found in similar places—old-fashioned doorknobs, homey fireplaces and gracious entryways. It’s much rarer to fall in love with an aging bathroom or kitchen. When Peter Thomas bought a house in Keswick, built in 1953, he found much to appreciate, but the kitchen and bathrooms were not in the […]
The lure of the long-blooming, low-maintenance garden is perennial in the gardener’s heart. After the rush of early spring has subsided and we are no longer smothered in an eruption of dogwoods, azaleas, peonies, iris and daffodils, thoughts inevitably turn to riding that wave of flowers on to first frost. But we don’t want to […]
While inspecting an array of tall boxwood shrubs on a property in the town of Orange last year, Grelen Nursery founder Dan Gregg discovered more than he bargained for. The 1891 farmhouse in the center of the ring of shrubs was for sale, and Dan immediately saw its potential as a lodging and event space, […]
There’s a mythical element to mirrors, says interior designer Alana Woerpel, that’s very intriguing. “Some cultures believe that mirrors hold powers over our souls. Hence, a vampire without a soul has no reflection,” she says. “The queen in Snow White had a magic mirror. Alice fell into an alternate world beyond the looking glass. It’s […]
You pull your juicy, flame-kissed burgers off the grill, struggle through your patio door, and let your meat rest on the kitchen counter. You head back outside. You put your buttered buns on the grill and do a 180 to give your coleslaw a final mix in the kitchen. You head back outside. You take […]
Inside a gigantic twig nest, 5-year-old Colter Vincenti flaps his arms. “Help me find food,” he trills. Colter and his mom, Leora Vincenti, have come for the first time to Wildrock, a new nonprofit nature “playscape” located in northwestern Albemarle County. “It’s pretty simple,” says Vincenti. “Kids are boiling with energy and nature can absorb it.” […]