On Friday, January 17, Albemarle CiderWorks and Mudhouse Coffee Roasters scored top honors in the 2020 Good Food Awards in San Francisco. Among more than 2,000 entrants, the cidery and coffee producer were regional (South) winners in their respective categories—ACW for its Harrison cider, and Mudhouse for its Geisha Moras Negras roast. Bestowed annually by […]
Centuries of domestic breeding have resulted in cats and dogs that come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. If you have a favorite breed, there’s a good chance that you like it to some degree because of the way it looks. But what do our pets see when they look back at […]
On one of those fall days that starts out cool and warms up in the afternoon, hinting at the change of seasons, a group of 15 to 20 young skateboarders gathers in the upper corner of the Charlottesville Skate Park. Ranging in age from about 10 to 19, the kids are dressed in everything from […]
Like all agricultural endeavors, growing grapes is subject to the vicissitudes of weather. In Virginia, after a difficult 2018 harvest (because of rain, rain, and more rain), 2019 was good—some would say great—thanks to timely precipitation and stretches of warm, sunny weather. “This vintage is a beautiful gift to the faithful farmer,” says Luca Paschina, […]
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 […]
This is a story about sewing machines and a woman who repairs and gives them to Charlottesville’s refugees. That might sound like a paltry gift. But to a refugee who sold her clothes in her home country to help pay for her family’s journey to escape violence, institutionalized misogyny, and possibly death, a sewing machine […]
Robin Felder sees connections. For instance, when he installed the 250-gallon solid copper still at his and his wife Mary’s hilltop home near North Garden, he knew that the high-tech machine would need a considerable water source to cool and condense the evaporated alcohol into the final, drinkable product. The swimming pool, sunk subtly into […]
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, […]