Living | Megan J. Headley

 Want to know what wine geeks all over the world are guzzling as their year round house red with everything from pizza to pork chops? I’ll give you a hint: It shares a name with that barely-fermented bubblegum juice that starts winging its way into glasses this Thursday. Despite having a region and a grape, [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

The six of us had no idea when we arrived at Aromas Café for dinner that we’d be waddling out three hours later feeling like we’d been to Morocco and back

Living | Megan J. Headley

Taylor Smack clears out a brewing tank, known as a mash tun, of spent malted grains from a freshly brewed batch of a doppelbock. Eating and drinking local is getting easier every day. We shop at farmers’ markets, drink wine from vineyards just down the road, and taste beer at our local breweries. But, when [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

The good chef You probably know Chef Eric Ripert as a judge on Bravo’s “Top Chef” or from “No Reservations,” where he’s traveled and eaten with best buddy and fellow silver fox, Anthony Bourdain. But, this soft-spoken chef from Andorra, France, is a star in his own right, with four cookbooks, a show called “Avec [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

 I don’t often contemplate death, yet the thought of asking food and wine people what they would eat and drink as a final meal is irresistible. It’s a passionate question for a passionate bunch, and while coffee-table books have been dedicated to last meals, the wine is often overlooked. I say that’s the meat of [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

Back in August, I closed my laptop for a week to scrub, power wash and throw out my back, but it was only the prep before the storm. I was on call for dirty harvest jobs (exact picking and processing dates can’t be predicted), but with the searing summer we had, I expected to have [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

If you’re an oyster lover, then you’ve probably been slurping the critters down for a month now (we’re already well into onto our second “r” month, signaling safer shellfish consumption—myth or not) and washing them down with one of the classic wine pairings—Chablis if budget allows and Muscadet for the rest of us.

Living | Megan J. Headley

In 1996, John Kiers bought an abandoned 100-acre farm near Staunton. He planted 20 acres of it with grape vines in 1999.

Living | Megan J. Headley

 It’s hard not to giggle when someone pours you a glass of wine from a bottle four times its regular size. It’s like the person should be wearing clown shoes and an oversized bow tie. But when Geoff Macilwaine, manager of Wine Warehouse, hosted a party to honor an aisle-bound employee last weekend, he expertly [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

Mead, the honey wine drunk by famous olde tymers like King Midas, Chaucer and the Vikings, hasn’t had a big following since, well, King Midas, Chaucer and the Vikings. Mostly poured by velvet-clad, corseted “wenches” at renaissance fairs, mead’s been trapped in the Middle Ages. But with a current estimate of 60 dedicated meaderies nationwide [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

Charlottesville cried into its hot and sour soup when legendary Sichuan chef Peter Chang skipped town, but then we counted our fortune cookies when he reappeared to open Peter Chang’s China Grill this spring. There, chefs trained in his techniques and fiery recipes give us a place to swoon and sweat seven days a week [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

When we made our reservation at Peter Chang’s China Grill, manager Gen Lee asked us to bring wine because he doesn’t love their list. The request came as no surprise. Wine certainly isn’t the first pairing that comes to mind when you think of fiery hot and intensely spiced Sichuan cuisine. Beer, yes, or maybe even small sips of water between tears.

Living | Megan J. Headley

Ironic that the cradle of all things civilized, including wine, should only now be experiencing a renaissance in winemaking. But since its B.C. days of fueling bacchanalias and famous philosophers, Greek wine became something of a tragedy.    Winespeak 101 Amphorae (n.): A vase-shaped ceramic container with two handles and a narrow neck used to transport and [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

If you think my job as a wine writer is cushy and glamorous, you’re right. On winery visits, I get to frolic through the greening vines, sample new wines in the cellar and then taste the finished products in comfy tasting rooms, eating all the oyster crackers I want.

Living | Megan J. Headley

As pleasant as the sleepy and sparsely populated summers are here, the start of school injects energy back into this brainy little town. If you’re anything like me, you get student envy: wistfully thinking back to brand new Trapper Keepers and 5-Subject notebooks. The good news is that with your compulsory education complete, you can use your free time to learn while you drink.

Living | Megan J. Headley

James Bond had his shaken-not-stirred martinis; The Dude had his White Russians and Carrie Bradshaw had her Cosmopolitans. In this day when our Facebook profiles precede us, it’s nice to have a signature that captures our three-dimensional selves. Hairstyles, clothes and scents help to define our styles, but I say drink orders are the window [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

The melody of an ice cream truck can whisk you down memory lane as fast as a lick of a Bomb Pop, but this vestige of nostalgia seems to have gone the way of the paperboy and the milkman. Thankfully, there’s still one truck jingling its way around town.

Living | Megan J. Headley

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 [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

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 [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

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.

Living | Megan J. Headley

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 [...]

Living | Megan J. Headley

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.