Month: May 2005

Dear Ace: I was just wondering, who is Boyd, and what does he serve at his tavern?—Thirsty for Answers

Thirsty: Reading your question, poor Ace felt an insatiable need to wet his whistle. So, he hopped in the Acemobile and headed toward Boyd Tavern, at the junction of Route 616 and Three Chop’t Road, just south of Shadwell. What he found was confusing; Boyd was not tavern, but a house without a single barfly or beer glass in sight!

   Desperate for answers, Ace trekked back into town to visit his wise muse, Margaret O’Bryan, over at the Albemarle Historical Society. What Ace found was that Boyd Tavern was not a tavern, but an “ordinary.” Granted, an “ordinary” is the same thing as an “inn,” which is the same thing as a “tavern,” as the distinction hinges upon what area of the country the structure in question is located in. Boyd is in the south, so it’s an ordinary.

   In the pre-railroad era, Virginia travelers would follow along the James and Rivanna rivers aboard horse-drawn stagecoaches. Since the journey between Charlottesville and Richmond took 24 hours, “stage sick” passengers would take lodgings in the louse-filled beds of the local ordinaries. (And Ace doesn’t mean “louse” as in deadbeat dads or skeezy himbos. He’s talking the parasitic insects. Horrors!)

   Col. Lilburn Lewis, the husband of Thomas Jefferson’s sister, Lucy, was the original owner of Boyd Tavern. In 1790, Lewis obtained an ordinary license for the property, which he leased to one Mr. Watson, who named the dive “Old Watson’s Ordinary.” Eventually, Lewis rented the site to Thomas D. Boyd. Boyd became the tavern’s new namesake, and so the spot remained Boyd Tavern until the building burned down in 1868. Rebuilt with the original foundation and chimney, Boyd Tavern—like Old Dirty Bastard/Big Baby Jesus and Prince/The Artist—changed names once again to become Shepherd’s Inn.

   In its heyday, Boyd Tavern boasted two world-famous guests. The first notable visitor was Marquis de Lafayette, a French citizen turned Continental Army general who made two visits, once in 1781 with his army, and again in 1824. The second celebrity visitor was Senator William Cabell Rives, a two-term American ambassador to France.

   So, Thirsty, Ace regrets to inform you that for local peach brandy, you should try another louse-y ordinary!

On any given evening, you can turn on the TV and surf past images that not too long ago were considered too shocking, too politically contentious, or too offensive for national broadcast: interracial couples; visibly pregnant women; graphic violence; sex; homosexuality; foul language; even dancing, singing animated feces. Thanks to the rise of reality TV, it’s become acceptable to broadcast graphic, gruesome images of real or realistic medical procedures (rhinoplasties, gastric bypasses, and autopsies) and gross-out bodily functions (people eating bugs, worms, and rats; people vomiting).

   You’ll undoubtedly witness characters both fictional and real dealing with complicated love triangles, sex, birth, death, betrayal, and more moral conundrums than you can shake your remote at. You might even catch a comedic skit that openly mocks Jesus and God. But there’s one thing you’re almost guaranteed not to see on TV, despite the reality of it being one of the most common medical procedures in the United States: abortion. As many commentators have pointed out, as all of the old you-can’t-do-that-on-television taboos— sexual content, violence, cursing, nudity, homosexuality—have fallen away, abortion is the one hot-button issue that simply remains too hot for TV.

   Robert Thompson, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and Television at Syracuse University, describes abortion as being “conspicuous by its absence,” while in a November 2004 New York Times article Kate Arthur calls it an “aberration.” While the public and political discourse around issues like gay rights has dramatically increased over the past 30 years—and subsequently become increasingly visible in popular culture—the discourse around abortion and reproductive rights has actually narrowed, to the point where it has become more difficult to introduce the issue of abortion on a TV show than it once was.

 

The debut of reproductive rights

Way back in 1964—nearly a decade before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationally—a main character on the soap opera “Another World” got pregnant and had what was referred to as an “illegal operation,” which left her sterile. Shortly after the 1973 Roe decision, Susan Lucci’s “All My Children” character had soap opera’s first legal abortion, with none of the health or psychosocial aftereffects (sterility, insanity, murder, etc.) that would come to characterize soap abortions in the future. But the best-known and most widely viewed pop culture abortion took place in 1972 on “Maude,” the “All in the Family” spin-off starring Bea Arthur as the titular liberal feminist. When 47-year-old Maude, who was married and had a grown daughter, became unexpectedly pregnant, she opted for an abortion, which was legal in New York State at the time. (In a sign of just how different the times were, “Maude”’s producers cooked up the abortion storyline in response to a challenge from the group Zero Population Growth, which was sponsoring a $10,000 prize for sitcoms that tackled the issue of population control.)

   In the wake of Roe v. Wade, and as the basic tenets of second-wave feminism seeped into the American mainstream in the ’70s and ’80s, serious adult-oriented dramas like “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere” and “Cagney & Lacey” featured abortions every season or so, as did the occasional soap opera. In the real world, the annual number of abortions steadily increased until 1985, when the abortion rate leveled off. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, in the face of a growing number of legal challenges to Roe, a smattering of storylines revisited the specter of illegal abortions, as if to remind us of what was at stake. On Vietnam War-era drama “China Beach,” a young nurse named Holly has an illegal abortion; the show’s moral center, leading character Colleen McMurphy, is a staunch Catholic who disapproves of Holly’s actions. Popular shows “thirtysomething” and “Cagney & Lacey” addressed the issue more obliquely, often using flashbacks to provide some distance from the controversial event or using an extraordinary event—like a bombing of an abortion clinic on “Cagney”—to touch on the issue.

 

Moral dilemmas and false alarms

With the rise of the primetime teen soap (“Beverly Hills 90210,” “Party of Five,” “Dawson’s Creek”) in the mid-’90s, it was inevitable that sexually active teen and young adult characters would be confronted with pregnancy, often in the guise of the Very Special Episode. Enter the convenient miscarriage. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, some 13 percent of unwanted pregnancies end in miscarriage, but on TV that number is much, much higher. The convenient miscarriage goes something like this: Sympathetic lead character gets knocked up. SLC agonizes over what to do, sometimes going so far as to visit an abortion clinic. SLC decides that although she believes in a woman’s right to choose (her boyfriend or best friend most likely feels significantly different, however), she’s going to keep her baby. Moral dilemma resolved, SLC spontaneously miscarries; SLC is sad but realizes that in the end she wasn’t really ready to be a mother anyway. (Alternatively, the pregnancy turns out to be a false alarm, an even tidier wrap-up to the dilemma.) The convenient miscarriage/false alarm remains the most popular strategy for dodging abortion, as it allows TV producers to congratulate themselves for tackling the tough topics without having to take an actual stand.

   Recently, however, a handful of shows have approached the issue head-on, even allowing characters to go through with the abortion. But there is always a measure of conflict and moral crisis: A 2003 episode of the WB show “Everwood” turned the issue around, to focus on the moral dilemma of the doctor (the show’s lead character) over whether he can in good conscience perform an abortion; in the end, he decides he can’t do it, and passes the case to a colleague, who does the procedure then heads off to a priest to confess his sins. Over on HBO, an episode of “Six Feet Under” depicted teenage lead Claire matter-of-factly getting an abortion, without endless agonizing or moral anguish—but in a subsequent episode her aborted fetus pays her a visit, appearing as a cute infant (a plot device that wasn’t all that unusual, as dead people appear as hallucinations or ghosts on the show all the time). And last summer, a two-part episode of the made-in-Canada teen soap “Degrassi: The Next Generation” made headlines when 14-year-old lead character Manny gets pregnant, has an abortion (saying, “I’m just trying to do the right thing here. For me. For everyone, I guess”), and doesn’t express any regret afterward. Alas, U.S. viewers won’t get to see the show: The Viacom-owned cable channel N, which airs “Degrassi” in the United States, refused to air it.

 

Today’s four-letter word

While Maude’s abortion was truly groundbreaking, it inadvertently galvanized the anti-choice movement. When CBS reran the episode six months later, some 40 affiliates refused to air it, and national advertisers shied away from buying ad time, establishing a pattern that remains in effect today. Even more significantly, after the episode first aired anti-abortion leaders took their case to the Federal Communications Commission, arguing that the fairness doctrine—which mandated equal time for opposing views—ought to cover not just editorials and public affairs but entertainment programming too. Because “Maude” had an abortion on CBS, they argued, they should have the right to reply on CBS. They lost the case, but won the attention of the networks. In 1987, the fairness doctrine itself was struck down; but by that point, it didn’t matter: The networks had established a pattern of covering their asses by presenting some semblance of balance as way of diffusing potentially volatile subjects. In the landmark episode, Maude agonizes over the decision, but her daughter reassures her, speaking in the language of the growing feminist movement: “When you were young, abortion was a dirty word. It’s not anymore.”

   But more than 30 years later, as many of the tenets of the women’s liberation movement have become accepted parts of mainstream American culture, abortion is a messy, if not exactly dirty, word. Back in 1992, when the sitcom “Murphy Brown” was hailed for its overt feminism and its titular character found herself unmarried and unexpectedly pregnant, the a-word was never uttered. Diane English, the show’s producer, said in a June 1992 Houston Chronicle article, “She would have used the word many times, but I wanted a lot of people to watch, and certain words have become inflammatory and get in the way of people hearing what we wanted her to say.” In the end, Brown had the baby, igniting the ire of Vice President Dan Quayle and disappointing many feminists.

   During the battle for abortion rights that culminated in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, public declarations were an integral tactic of the movement. In an effort to overcome the shame and silence surrounding abortion, women organized public speak-outs, at which they talked openly and honestly about their illegal abortions. Abortion is a fact of life, they asserted, and it affects women of all colors, class and religious or political belief. Over the years, however, as the anti-abortion movement has grown stronger and more organized, the pro-choice movement has struggled to regain this clarity of speech. Young women who were born after Roe continually assert that abortion is a private decision, a private choice that needn’t be broadcast—an attitude that is at once true but also extremely politically naive.

   Veteran TV producer Diane English acknowledged this back in February 2001, when she wondered aloud to The New York Times: “Maybe women…only had to think about their Manolo Blahniks for the past eight years under the Clinton Administra-tion. If women start to wonder if they will lose the right to have an abortion, perhaps that attitude may change during the next four years.” Sadly, it seems like it may take another four years for women to get scared—and angry—enough to demand that popular culture reflect their concerns.

 

Abortion in the real world

The current state of abortion on TV reflects both mainstream American attitudes toward abortion and contemporary feminists’ discord over pro-choice strategies. While poll after poll indicates that a majority of Americans support the upholding of Roe v. Wade, it’s also clear that a majority of Americans have deep concerns and moral conflicts about abortion. This ambivalence is reflected in the pro-choice movement, too, as nationally recognized feminist leaders speak of the need to recognize the agony and shame that accompany abortion. Given this roiling mass of conflicting feelings and politics, it’s no wonder that an hour-long drama can’t get a handle on the issue.

   As Syracuse University’s Thompson points out, “A lot of people strongly feel that there’s too much sex on TV, but they will have no trouble watching an episode of ‘Blind Date’ or ‘Desperate Housewives’ in their own home. With abortion, those feelings aren’t so easily eliminated in one’s TV viewing. No [networks] want to run the risk of powerfully offending people on either side [of the issue].”

   As a result, what we see on TV isn’t likely to satisfy anyone, no matter where they stand. Producers strive for a form of balance by always ensuring that there’s a dissenting voice of some sort—a friend, relative, or authority figure who ardently asserts their anti-abortion stance. To pro-choice folks, TV’s take on abortion seems unnecessarily harsh, moralizing and punitive. With the exception of the unaired “Degrassi” episode, you never see a character undertake an abortion the way many women you know do: With the utter confidence that she’s doing the right thing in a difficult situation. To abortion foes, TV is littered with anti-fetus propaganda that leans heavily on the choice angle while refusing to come out and declare that abortion is murder. It’s a no-win situation.

   Out in the real world, feminists and reproductive-rights activists are working to rescue the language of moral values from the radical right, and using it in this thorniest of issues to present the decision to have an abortion as a deeply moral one. To name just a few examples, Jennifer Baumgardner’s new documentary I Had an Abortion and national news articles by feminist activist Amy Richards and novelist Ayelet Waldman detail their difficult abortion choices. For now, it’s unlikely that TV viewers will ever see one of the “Desperate Housewives” unapologetically opting for a second-trimester abortion when she realizes her fetus has profound genetic anomalies, or one of the lissome gals on “The O.C.” sporting an “I Had an Abortion” baby tee, proclaiming that ending her pregnancy was the best decision she ever made.

   The trashy, ephemeral landscape of pop culture may seem like an unimportant front in the battle for women’s rights, given the injustices that befall real live women and girls every day around the world. But as the 2004 election has shown, the United States is in the midst of an all-out culture war, in which public language and pop images are playing a crucial role in shaping the terms of the debate. In the struggle to capture the hearts and minds of Americans, the reproductive-rights movement—like the rest of the progressive movement—needs to find new ways to present its case openly and frankly. Like death and taxes, abortion is one of the world’s certainties—no matter the legal status, there will always be unintended pregnancies, and there will always be women who seek to terminate those pregnancies. After all, of the 6 million pregnancies each year in this country, half are unintended; some 47 percent of those unintended pregnancies result in abortion. And has history has shown us, not talking about it won’t make it go away.

 

Rachel Fudge is the senior editor of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. This article was originally published in Clamor Magazine.

Dear Ace: What’s happening on the Bypass near the 250 exit? I see lots of construction and dirt movers. McMansions? Rest stop? —Rhodes Scholar

Rhodes: With all the earth-moving going on around town (or earth scorching, as the case may be—the first time Ace drove by the Hollymead Town Center site he thought a nuclear bomb had gone off!), it’s no wonder you can’t keep track of all the projects. Not to worry. Ace has the dirt on the dirt movers.

   With a little digging (ha!) this intrepid reporter found out that it’s all part of the new $128 million John Paul Jones Arena project and the $47 million Arts Center project. To relieve the traffic congestion that would be sure to hamper Emmet Street after basketball games and other events at the new venues, a new half-mile road is being built off 250 East that will wind around the Darden School, the North Grounds Recreation Center, and connect on to Massie Road. Dubbed the North Grounds Connector, the new road, according to the UVA Office of the Architect’s website, will “intersect with the 250 Bypass by means of an ‘at-grade’ intersection with entry and exit from eastbound lanes only.”

   But Ace, you ask, “What if people don’t use the new road? Won’t that cause congestion on Emmet Street?” Not to worry. During arena events the east end of Massie Road will be blocked off so that cars leaving the event can’t even access Emmet Street.

   The $4 million price tag on the road link is included in the $128 million JP Jones Arena project, and the road should be completed along with the arena next May. And here’s an Ace traffic alert for you, Rhodes: Now that graduation is over at UVA (goodbye for a while, Sunday-morning Corner vomit!), Massie Road is closed at the intersection where it meets the North Grounds Connector. It will reopen in August.

   It’s all part of the Master Plan, Rhodes. Not Ace’s Master Plan—that he’ll never reveal. At least not without drinks and dinner first. No, the North Ground Connector is part of The University’s Master Plan, the part about serving the larger community. As UVA sees it, developing safe, attractive, traffic-relieving entrances to The University is something old TJ himself would have wanted.

When summer creeps through the front door, that’s the time some of us creep out the back. Playing hooky is a time- honored tradition; even bike-riding presidents are doing it these days! In celebration of the season, we’ve culled 10 ideas that will spice up your illicit time away from work or other obligations. Whether you seek some alone time or retail therapy or even if you’re just escaping from errands and dirty dishes in order to reconnect with your kids, we might be able to help you out. But when it comes to making up a story to account for your absence—and sticking to it—well, you’re on your own there.

 

Minor (league) details 
Richmond is the land of the free, home of the Braves

Sometimes the only sure way for us Charlottesvillians to go unseen is to get out of town. Think about it: Where can you go here and be absolutely sure you won’t see anyone you know? (Like your boss or an ex).

   Well, if you’re a baseball fan (or even if you’re not) there’s an afternoon cure for your ubiquity. Put on a baseball hat and a pair of dark sunglasses, head east down Route 64 for about an hour, and catch a 2, 4, or 7pm Richmond Braves game at “The Diamond.” A day trip to The Diamond is a great seventh inning stretch from life in Charlottesville. Plus, you’ll still make it back to town for dinner or a nightcap.

   Once seated, just grab a hot dog or a grilled sausage from Dominic’s of New York, hail a beer vendor and disappear into the 12,000-plus-seat stadium. Even if you do see someone you know, losing him or her is easy. Just wander around the stadium or duck into The Diamond Bar & Grill, which has a glass wall with a great view of the field from the first base side of the stadium. At only $6 for general admission and $9 for a box seat, it’s a pretty cheap way to play hooky for a day. Plus, you can yell as loud as you want! And the baseball’s not bad either. Former major leaguers hungry to get back to The Show and younger players only a good hitting streak away from being called up make for some competitive, exciting baseball.

   The Richmond Braves also offer up some fun promotions all season long. Every-thing from teacher and military appreciation days, to live music and a Star Wars night, as well as a salute to the Negro Leagues, with former league players on hand and both teams wearing throwback Negro League uniforms.

   If you’re looking to escape small-town reality for a few hours and bask in anonymity, getting away to see the Richmond Braves just might be a good call.—Dave McNair

To get to The Diamond: Take Route 64 East toward Richmond, merge with I-95, take Exit 78 (Boulevard Exit). Stadium is two blocks south after exiting. To find out about the Braves’ ‘05 schedule, special promotions and ticket information, visit http://rbraves.com, or call (804) 359-4444 or (800) 849-4627.

 

Love, rein down on me!
Perk up with a horseback-riding lesson

If your workweek involves a cubicle, then a satisfying hooky day alternative might be a leisurely, but visual, outdoor activity, such as horseback riding. As any cowboy will confirm, sublime vistas are enhanced when viewed from the perspective of a horse’s back.

   If the last time you were horseback was your seventh grade summer vacation to the Grand Tetons, fear not! The Rodes Farm Equestrian Center, located at Wintergreen’s Stoney Creek Village, has a variety of horseback activities ranging from weekday trail rides to pony rides to private riding lessons. With an emphasis on the English riding tradition (characterized by the saddle without the horn and the direct rein technique), the Rodes Farm Equestrian Center has been providing horsey fun to the Wintergreen Community since 1977.

   Open March through November, 9am-6pm, the rides follow trails that overlook the majestic Rockfish Valley and Wintergreen Mountain. The trail rides are geared toward both the novice rider ($47 per hour) and the “hack rider” ($50 per hour). Being a “hack rider,” it should be noted, is not the same thing as being a hack poet, since the former means that you can walk, trot and canter using English tack. Thankfully, to participate in the beginner trail ride, all you need to do is sit upright in the saddle!

   If you are interested in making the transition from novice to hack, group-riding lessons are available, and go for $38 an hour. On Saturday nights, the Equestrian Center also offers Sunset Dinner trail rides that take you from the stables at Wintergreen to Lake Monocan, against the romantic backdrop of the setting sun. The cost ($85 per person) even includes an evening meal prepared by the chef at the Stoney Creek Bar & Grill, which means that you will probably be enjoying the best picnic east of the Rio Grande.

   Since you did bag work to go horseback riding, it’s essential to look the part. Opt for a pair of blue jeans and sturdy shoes for protection against itchy horse blankets and the low-lying brush that covers the wild, wild, west of town. Even if you can’t control your horse any more than you can control the universe, at least you will look like a pro in the pictures.

   And definitely take a few pictures. The memories will cheer up your cube when you do return to your weekday obligations.—Anne Metz

 

To get to The Rodes Farm Equestrian Center at Stoney Creek Village: Take Route 64 West to Exit 107, travel west on Route 250, make a left on Route 151, look for signs to Stoney Creek on the right. For more information call 325-8260.

 

Death becomes you
A cemetery is ideal for getting away from it all

If you’re feeling like a zombie and are just dying to get away from the office, the last place you’d think of going to is a cemetery. Which is exactly what’s so great about them—you can be pretty sure that the rest of the workforce won’t be creeping around the City of the Dead with you. And since the cemetery residents are too busy pushing up the daisies, you are guaranteed solitude and privacy, with the added benefit of that fresh-flower smell.

   Maplewood Cemetery, the oldest graveyard in Charlottesville, is a jumble of paths, toppled headstones and boxwoods. Get some exercise by visiting Lettitia Shelby, the wife of the first governor of Kentucky and owner of the oldest gravestone in Maplewood (she died in 1777). Or be like Indiana Jones and search for the 100-some unmarked Confederate graves scattered throughout the 2,500 gravestones.

   If you’re hoping for inspiration, head over to the chock-full-of-character Daughters of Zion cemetery, established in 1873 for the African-American community. Remnants of fencing and withered headstones testify to the memory of those who struggled through harder times, and the tombstone of Benjamin Tonsler, after whom Tonsler Park is named, reminds of us of the good people can bring to the world. A former slave, he became the principal of the Jefferson School in the 19th century, dedicating his life and career to helping educate African-Americans.

   At the University Cemetery at UVA, founded in 1828, there are even more reminders of the life of the mind. A stroll among the stones reveals names familiar from campus buildings such as Alderman, Clemons and Newcomb.

   If you still aren’t turned on to the idea of playing hooky in a cemetery, here’s the clincher: It’s easy to disguise your real purpose. If that irritating receptionist or annoying manager catches you, just tell them you’re visiting your dead. Remember to pack your eye drops and prepare a tale about the family tree, just in case.—Katy McCune

 

The University Cemetery of UVA is located at the corner of Alderman and McCormick. Maplewood Cemetery is located on 425 Maple St. Daughters of Zion is located on Oak Street. All are open during daylight hours. Let the dead rest in peace—no dogs, please.

 

Sweet, salty summer
Hooky’s twice as nice with a margarita or three

Whether there’s a woman to blame (or man), an unreasonable boss, or you know it’s your own damn fault, sometimes the best cure-all for an aching heart or a bruised ego is a good margarita at 3 in the afternoon. Hell, a good margarita in the afternoon is a great idea even if you’re as happy as a clam at a beach party! Lucky for you, Charlottesville boasts a trio of top-notch tequila stations ready to serve you a cool, salty one before the sun goes down. So stop looking for that lost shaker of salt—and hand over your car keys to a friend!

   Two Corner landmarks, Baja Bean and St. Maarten’s Café, load the rails at 11am and stay open straight through last call at 1:30am. The Bean has 20 kinds of tequila to choose from and a secret ingredient in their homemade sour mix that owner Ron Morse won’t reveal. The Bean’s signature margarita, the “Ronrita” (named for Morse), features Two Fingers Gold, their classified sour mix, and a knockout version of Grand Gala. Frozen margaritas with fresh fruit are also available. Large margaritas come in a 27-ounce bulb glass and smaller ones in a standard pint glass. Five years ago, Morse told me, they used to serve the Ronrita in real fish bowls they bought out at Wal-Mart, but the Virginia ABC board banned the practice.

   Just a short walk away, St. Maarten’s Cafe serves up a long list of tequila and sour mix favorites, including its famous Gulf Stream blue margarita, fueled with Cuervo Gold and Blue Curaco. Like the Bean, Maarten’s offers up an assortment of frozen margs with fresh fruit, including a specialty fruit flavored marg called a “Rasberrita.” After 4pm on Thursdays, Maarten’s hosts Cheeseburger in Paradise Night with margs not much more expensive than a gallon of gas.

   As if that weren’t enough to get you pleasantly schnockered in the middle of the day, Joe Deluce and his family just moved up to Charlottesville from South Florida (where the margarita is more than just a drink, it’s a way of life) in January to open Sharky’s on Grady Avenue. When I told Deluce’s sister Julieanna that I was searching for the best margarita in Charlottesville, she didn’t hesitate. “That’s us,” she said confidently. According to rumors, that’s not false bravado. Restaurateurs from South Florida claiming they make a pretty good margarita are like winemakers from the southeastern coast of France claiming they make a pretty good Bordeaux.—Dave McNair

 

Sharky’s Bar & Grill is located at 946 Grady Ave., and can be reached at 293-3473. St. Maarten’s Café is at 1400 Wertland St.; call 293-2233. And Baja Bean sprouts at 1327 W. Main St. Call 293-4507.

 

Aural fixation
Take note of the music library

There’s no reason to think that a day of hooky has to be devoted to mindless activity. If you are going to bag your 9-to-5 responsibilities, why not spend the brief holiday attending to another lifelong obligation, like feeding your mind? Now, I’m not suggesting that you take the day off to go to the science museum or the planetarium, though they are inviting possibilities. I’m talking about getting some useful knowledge that will not only enhance your life, but will also make you more interesting.

   UVA’s music library is the perfect hooky destination for a little bit of good, clean learning fun. Being that it’s located in the bottom of Old Cabell Hall, you are twice as likely to be struck by lightning as you are to get caught in the library by a fellow co-worker.

   Open to the community, the listening cubes are fully equipped for CDs, tapes, and vinyl (33s, 45s and the ever-elusive 78s). The best part of the music library is that, with a collection of more than 100,000 items, it is fully stocked to deal with even the most curious taste in music. If you have a penchant for Stockhausen, a hankering for the Tropicalia movement, or an unscratchable itch for Lawrence Welk, come on down to Old Cabell Hall because the music library will have what you need.

   All you have to do is enter the artist, album, or genre in the Virgo Search line of the public computers. The database will produce a call number for the item you seek. Take this number and present it to the refreshingly unpretentious person at the front desk. The librarian will then fetch your fancy from the collection. Check out the item for the afternoon, and you are suddenly set for a day of aural pleasure!

   Since you are trying to be discreet about your hooky holiday, you might feel a bit more comfortable if you try to fit in with the music library crowd. While this is a UVA library, it’s not Clemons; so, leave the incognito preppie clothes at home because they will make you stand out much more than requesting a Jessica Simpson album. In preparation, think graduate school. Try sporting jeans, a nondescript shirt, and some variation on the European carryall. If you are really ambitious, a slightly tortured countenance will only enhance your ability to blend into the crowd.—Anne Metz

UVA Music Library is located in Old Cabell Hall on Grounds. Find the stairway in the center of the lobby. Take the stairway leading to the right down one floor. Turn left past the practice modules and find a second stairway. Follow these stairs down one more floor, go through the doorway, turn right and you are there.

 

Join the consumer nation
Hooky gets pretty with a trip to Short Pump

 If shopping at a mall sounds as miserably confining as your regular job, you might want to consider taking a day trip to the Short Pump Town Center. Short Pump is one of the newfangled open-air malls designed to make shoppers feel as if they are shopping in Europe. The intended European analogy might be a stretch, since the mall is smoke-free and air-conditioned. Still, this does not diminish the inherent appeal of being able to catch a quick glimpse of sunlight between shopping stops. It’s like Europe, but cushier and more kid friendly.

   On the westernmost end of what might be considered Richmond, Short Pump is only about an hour away. The distance is a good thing since it cuts down on your risk of being spotted on your self-proclaimed “mental health” day. If you go during the week, the crowds are quite sparse, so you get the sense that you have the whole mall to yourself.

   What best distinguishes Short Pump Town Center from our local mall would be the high-end department stores. You could spend all day on the two floors of Nordstrom, Dillard’s and Hecht’s alone. Nordstrom, of course, boasts the best shoe department, while Hecht’s seems to have a sizeable corner on the cosmetics counter market. If you have the time, let one of the make-up artists give you a complimentary new summer look. You don’t have to buy everything, especially not the bronzer, but buy something to remind yourself of your fanciful day.

   If you get hungry while shopping, I would recommend Tara Thai for lunch. Though it is a chain restaurant, it’s still an ethnic cuisine, which makes it somewhat more palatable.

   After the department stores and your lunch, there are still 60-odd other stores to explore. While you are there, be sure to check out the Apple Store to browse the latest accessories for your computer or your pod. For the young and trendy, don’t miss H&M, an inexpensive clothing conglomerate that now boasts Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld as a designer. If your Charlottesville pad is due for an update, Short Pump also has Crate and Barrel and Williams Sonoma, which are known for well-designed, affordable kitchen and house wares. But buyer beware, Short Pump does not have a bookstore, so leave your reading list at home.—Anne Metz

To get to Short Pump Town Center: Take Route 64 East to exit 178A, Short Pump Broad Street West. Go approximately 1 1/8 mile. Mall is on the right.

 

Hole lotta love
The popular Sugar Hollow hideaway is best mid-week

Leaping into an icy mountain stream is simply the most exhilarating way to keep cool in the summer. The thrill is even sweeter when you should be at work.

   Most Charlottesvillians know about Blue Hole—the Sugar Hollow hideaway halfway up Turk Mountain, where the South Fork of the Moormans River has carved out a sweet little pool. Officially, the City of Charlottesville owns that land and prohibits swimming there, but that doesn’t seem to deter many people.

   In fact, on a hot July Saturday Blue Hole can be too crowded for comfort. Privacy, after all, is half the charm of a mountain swimming hole. It’s hard to commune with nature when a pair of teenagers are French kissing on the fallen log (right next to your stuff!), and somebody’s fat dad is standing on the rock above you like a hairy, overfed Greg Louganis, poised to perform a perfect belly flop on your head. It’s enough to make the city pool—kid pee and all—seem attractive by comparison.

   That’s why the best time to take the plunge is when everyone else is punching the clock. Craft your alibi the night before—plan on feeling ill, taking your car in for repairs or set up an imaginary appointment. The next morning, ease your guilt by working extra hard. Then, once the sun gets high and the day starts heating up, make your break for the hills. The best part about playing hooky at Blue Hole is that the only way anyone can catch you is if he’s playing hooky, too.

   Blue Hole isn’t the only good swimming hole around here, but self-interest dictates that we keep those to ourselves!

   Playing hooky in a clear, cold stream is a deliciously irresponsible thrill, but can we end on a grown-up note? Don’t leave your soda cans and food wrappers to spoil someone else’s day off of work.—John Borgmeyer

To get to Blue Hole: Go west on Barracks/ Garth Road and make a left on to Sugar Hollow Road (Route 614) in White Hall. Continue past the reservoir until you find the unofficial parking area. Cross the river and follow the old fire road that heads west.

 

Get your motor running
Take a drive to Warm Springs

There’s a great scene in the early ’90s classic Singles in which Campbell Scott’s character tries to convince Kyra Sedgwick’s character that a super train could cut it in Seattle. Sedgwick’s character smiles politely and says something like, “Yeah, but I still love my car.”

   Word. Blather on about cars vs. bikes vs. mass transit vs. the Starship Enterprise: I like my car…

   …because it gets me the hell out of this burg on my clock. A little weekday game of hooky—with a little wind in the hair and a lot of oldies on the radio—is a big vacation from the daily grind. So tell the boss you’ve got cramps, fill up the tank and hit the road, Jackie.

   The options are endless. But me, I’m bougie. I like baths, skin treatments and a nice glass of wine. Thus, I drive west to Warm Springs and Hot Springs, The Homestead’s two virtual company towns.

   Heading to Warm Springs, after taking Route 64W to Staunton, screw the highway and gun it into the back roads of Augusta and Bath counties. Turn off the AC and roll down the windows because it doesn’t get much better than this, folks. Fresh mountain air, country stores, cows, tractors going 10 miles an hour in front of you, and a brand new countryscape around every bend.

   After Staunton, take Route 254W to Buffalo Gap. Turn south on Route 42, hang a right at Goshen onto Route 39W and drive for about 15 miles ’til you pass two round white clapboard buildings nestled in a grove of trees by the side of the road. Inside are The Jefferson Pools: naturally warm spring mineral baths that were once graced with the exalted presence of Mr. Jefferson’s very own naked ass.

   Nudity is highly recommended. So for modesty’s sake, there’s one bathhouse for the gentlemen (built in 1761) and one for the ladies (built in 1836). It’s owned and operated by the pricey Homestead, and you can shell out a mere $15 to soak for an hour, towels included. Shell out an additional $50 to $95 and add a massage.

   For extra pampering, meander another five miles south to The Homestead itself. Life’s a tad more expensive in this neck of the woods (a pedicure runs $95) but wander the grounds and at the very least, order an appetizer and glass of vino at one of the hotel restaurants. Indulgence works up quite the appetite.

   My guarantee, dear readers? By 9am the next morning, Ms. New Attitude will be back on the job. Cramps? What cramps? —Nell Boeschenstein

 

The Pig looks fine
Go here when the day says, “Barbecue”

 You wouldn’t be the first to play hooky at Blue Ridge Pig. The walls of the Nellysford restaurant—a glorified barbecue shack, really—are covered with hundreds of business cards from WVIR Channel 29, VMDO Architects, the IRS, the City of Charlottesville, etc. A dozen or so are crammed into door-jambs, a dozen or so more tacked to the plywood ceiling. One hand-written note stuck underneath a support post’s inches-long splinter thanks the owners for a tour of the barbecue pits.

   Lucky devil. But really, a tour of the premises isn’t necessary. You’ll learn all you need to know about the Blue Ridge Pig’s legendary BBQ by sampling the spot’s limited but hearty menu, scrawled in chalk on a flimsy piece of black-painted wood. The Pig mostly sticks to the basics—barbecue pork and beef sandwiches, ribs and chicken available by the sandwich, plate or pound—with a few surprises like the turkey croissant, which was so inviting it compelled our vegetarian friend to eat meat (no kidding).

   We, however, went with the classic pulled pork. Loaded on a toasted Kaiser bun wrapped in tin foil and served in a Styrofoam container, the tender meat is soaked with a sauce that marries the best of the red and white barbecue dynasties. The rich, smoky flavor that comes only from hours of preparation infuses every bite, and the subtle but potent kick reminds you that good barbecue is hard to find. The plate also comes with a creamy blended potato salad and savory baked beans, all for $7.40.

   Take your pick of eating indoors or outside, the better to take in the glorious Nelson County setting. Make plans to hike through the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains some day; wait for a beat, mock your lazy ass and then go back for seconds.

   If you sit inside, boogie to Oldies tunes like “Midnight Train to Georgia” on the radio and try to count the number of pig-themed stuffed animals and figurines. Try not to let the gigantic fake snowman in the side dining room freak you out.

   The best part of the Blue Ridge Pig hooky experience is that, with Nelson in the middle of nowhere, your boss will never find you there—unless she’s playing hooky, too. If that’s the case, buy her a BBQ pork plate, sing along to Gladys and the Pips—and make sure you both leave your business cards.—Eric Rezsnyak

To get to Blue Ridge Pig: Take 250 West, and turn left on Route 151 just before the Nelson County line. Follow Route 151 past the cows, horses and…Pilates studios of Nelson until you hit Nellysford. The Pig will be on your left, and is open daily 11am to 8pm.

 

Baby, it’s cold inside
Hide at the Ice Park when it’s time to play hooky with the kids

The idea seemed oxymoronic to me. Play hooky with my children? As a semi-employed mother of two young daughters, my idea of a sneaky escape usually entails some alone time reading the newspaper, getting a pedicure or strolling the Downtown Mall without a 5-year-old hanging off my back.

   It was, however, on one of those recent strolls that my daughters and I found ourselves in front of the Charlottesville Ice Park. We’d just made the trek from the Central Library, and were overheated and cranky. Instead of doing the responsible thing and trudging on toward our parked car, I hooked a left and announced, “We’re going ice skating.”

   Never mind that five minutes earlier I’d previewed the afternoon’s schedule: a trip to the grocery store, a stop at the dry cleaners, bedroom tidy-ups and some serious desk time for my eldest daughter and me. Neither child questioned the abrupt change in plans. Mom’s obviously lost it, the looks on their faces said, but this sure beats filling a cart at Harris Teeter.

   While the Ice Park’s public skating hours vary daily, there’s almost always a two- or three-hour weekday afternoon block where the ice is open to everyone. On that particular day, it was all ours until 4pm. We hadn’t come equipped with mittens or sweaters, but no matter: The rink’s temperature is kept between 55 and 60 degrees.

   After a few shaky loops, my youngest daughter felt confident enough to abandon me for a party of bucket-pushing smaller children on center ice. My 8-year-old took her place, and the two of us careened, hand-in-hand, around the rink. We practiced our hockey stops and had a skating backwards competition. Exhausted but happy after too many laps to count, all three of us exited the ice, turned in our skates and hit the snack bar for an early dinner of French fries, nachos, mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce, hot chocolate and funnel cake.

   On the way out, I asked the guy behind the skate rental desk if the Ice Park’s birthday party room could be rented for other kinds of events, like, say, a mommy happy hour. “Ah, sure,” he said dubiously, and I immediately began planning my next hooky-with-the-kids afternoon. Except this time it would include a few other mothers, a good bottle of wine and some snacks from my favorite gourmet market.—Susan Sorensen

The Charlottesville Ice Park is located on the west end of the Downtown Mall. A schedule of public skate times is published at the beginning of every month at icepark.com. Admission is $6 on weekdays. Skate rental is $1.50. Kids 5 and under get in for $2.75, and skate rental is 25 cents. Call 817-2400 for more information.

 

Star-spangled blather
Mr. Right sets C-VILLE straight about summer’s patriotic holidays

C-VILLE: Good morning, Mr. Right. We’ve asked you here today to discuss the summer holidays, most of which have a patriotic theme. And that leads me to my first question: Would you describe yourself as a Yankee Doodle Dandy?

Mr. Right: Yes, I would say I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy, a Yankee Doodle do or die. I’ve even been known to stick a feather in my hat and call it macaroni. That doesn’t refer to pasta, by the way. Back in pre-revolutionary days, macaroni was a word for a fancy form of Italian dress that the British were infatuated with. By sticking a feather in his hat and calling it macaroni, Yankee Doodle was putting on airs, though with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

 

I take it the British aren’t big fans of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

No, they still haven’t completely forgiven us for that whole declaration-of-independence thing, which is fine, because we still haven’t completely forgiven them for that whole taxation-without-representation thing. It must be especially galling to them that the Fourth of July is such a success. All they’ve got is, like, Guy Fawkes Day. Who, in the name of God Bless America, is Guy Fawkes?

 

Heck if I know. But back to our own holidays. What do you make of the fact that all our patriotic holidays seem to cluster together in the summer months? Did the Founding Fathers plan it that way?

The Founding Fathers were too busy working out a more perfect union to spend very much time on three-day weekends. No, most of these holidays originated later, as a result of pressure being applied by pressure groups. Even the Fourth of July took a while to get started. Most people don’t know that the Fourth of July wasn’t the day we declared our independence, “we” being the Second Continental Congress. That actually happened on the Second of July. What happened on the Fourth of July was the formal adoption of the document penned by Thomas Jefferson. Fine, so a year later two members of Congress had the bright idea of celebrating the anniversary of Independence Day, but they didn’t have their bright idea until the Third of July, by which time the Second of July was starting to smell like yesterday’s news. So they went with the Fourth of July instead.

 

So, to return to my original question, you make nothing of the fact that all our patriotic holidays seem to cluster during the summer?

Not all of them do. There’s President’s Day, which has never quite recovered from expanding beyond George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to include all the presidents. Let’s hear it for Grover Cleveland! And Richard Nixon! In February!

   If our patriotic holidays cluster during the summer months, that can probably be attributed to the fact that it’s very difficult to grill out during the winter months—not impossible, but difficult. It’s also difficult to hold a parade unless you’re in California or Florida. And there’s nothing to do on Monday, which is increasingly what our patriotic holidays are all about—coming up with ways to fill a day on which, had not millions of our fellow Americans laid down their lives in the name of freedom and democracy, we would be schlepping off to work.

 

This Monday is Memorial Day. Talk about it a little.

Well, it’s not my favorite holiday, and I’ll tell you why: It’s just so damn humbling. Those who have sacrificed their lives for our country deserve, at the very least, to be remembered until the end of time, their names sewn into our hearts with golden thread. Instead, they’re kind of shunted off to the side. I mean, when was the last time you showed up at the local cemetery for the wreath-laying ceremony? And one of the reasons for this, I think, is that the rest of us feel guilty. Too busy watching “CSI: Wichita” on TV, we’ve asked not what we could do for our country but what our country could do for us. Or the other way around. I always get that one mixed up.

 

The thing about death is, it’s a bummer.

All the more reason to acknowledge its dominion. There’s something kind of screwy about a country that will tune in to the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, secretly hoping for a fiery crash, then skip Memorial Day services on Monday morning. With the Indy 500, there’s merely the possibility of death. With Memorial Day services, there’s a virtual guarantee. And each and every one of those stories, from the guy who literally froze to death during the Battle of the Bulge to the guy who caught a bullet in the back of the head on the streets of Baghdad, will absolutely break your heart. What Memorial Day services need are fewer speeches and more stories.

 

How long has Memorial Day been around?

Since right after the Civil War. There’s an old-wives tale about some old wives—Confederate widows—who went to a Southern cemetery where soldiers from both the North and South were buried and placed flowers on all the graves. And who knows, the story may even be true. But the fact is, some two dozen communities across the United States have fought for the right to be called the birthplace of Memorial Day—not to the point of declaring war on one another, mind you, but to the point of casting doubts on any individual claim.

 

Moving on, how has the Fourth of July….

You forgot Flag Day.

 

I beg your pardon?

You forgot Flag Day. Between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July is Flag Day, and the reason I know that is because it happens to be my birthday. For years, I thought people displayed their flags on June 14 in honor of my birthday, as if they sensed a future political career that might carry me all the way to the White House. Call it irony, but I do happen to live in a white house, albeit one with green trim and a water heater that’s on its last leg.

 

What’s Flag Day all about?

I’m glad you asked. Flag Day is the day on which we salute the flag. Not literally, per se, but metaphorically. Technically speaking, it’s the anniversary of the day on which Congress passed a resolution specifying what our country’s flag should look like. (This was on June 14, 1777, for you history buffs.) But mostly it’s just an excuse to wrap ourselves in the gently waving folds of Old Glory.

 

You sound like a true believer.

I suppose I am, but not in the way you might imagine. To me, the flag is nothing but a symbol, and an open-ended symbol at that. As far as I’m concerned, you can spit on it, stomp on it, shred it, burn it or use it to wipe your butt. And I will defend to the death your right to commit these desecrations.

 

To the death?

Well, to minor bodily harm. One of the things I love the most about this country is that we’re not obligated by law to either salute the flag or pledge allegiance to it. And it’s perfectly legal to burn it. The guys down at the VFW hall may not agree with me on this, but I sometimes think the most patriotic thing you could do on Flag Day is exercise your First Amendment right to torch one, thereby proving that we do still live in the land of the free, the home of
the brave.

 

So, you believe in dissent.

Very much so. My motto is, “America: Love It or Leaflet.”

 

We’re running out of time, so maybe you could tell me what you like the most about the Fourth of July.

What I like the most is that so many millions of Americans are willing to break the law in order to get their hands on some Roman candles. I also like the strawberry shortcake.

 

And Labor Day?

What I like the most about Labor Day is that, despite its name, nobody gets a lick of work done. Labor Day began as a show of union strength—this was in the 1880s—and in the early years employers were reluctant to let their employees have the day off. So the unions wound up having to dock their members a day’s pay for working on Labor Day. God, I love this country.

 

Do you see 9/11 becoming a national holiday?

Not unless Pearl Harbor Day becomes a national holiday. We don’t tend to celebrate our defeats, which explains why, say, the Tet Offensive is a bigger deal in Vietnam than it is here. Now you know how the British feel about the Fourth of July.

 

That leaves Veteran’s Day, which isn’t really a summer holiday. Any thoughts?

For me, Veteran’s Day is Father’s Day. My father was a veteran of World War II, and I carry his dog tags on my keychain to remind me of that. Like so many members of the Greatest Generation, he didn’t like to talk about what happened to him over there—“over there” being France and Germany. But whatever happened, it formed a dark cloud that hung over him the rest of his life. We can never repay the debt we owe to the men and women who’ve braved the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, so the least we can do is show up and listen to those boring speeches.

 

Is that it, then?

Unless you want me to start warbling “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Speaking of which, did you know that the music for our national anthem was lifted from an old British drinking song? For all we know, some patriotic Vietnamese are right now invoking their hard-won freedom to the tune of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Serves us right.

Dear Ace: Cruising down Earlysville Road on my way to work each day, I always see a fleet of long, skinny boats next to the reservoir. I’m tempted to take my smokin’ date for a moonlit boat ride next Saturday night. But I wonder, who owns those boats and how can I use one?—Boatless Romantic

Boatless: With a little of his trademark investigating, Ace discovered that these boats are actually sculls. (No, not like in Hamlet, you Philistine—that’s s-k-u-l-l.) “Scull” is the sophisticated term for a particular kind of boat in which the rowers use two oars. The Rivanna Rowing Club owns an entire rowing flotilla complete with four eight-person sweep boats, three four-seater sweeps, and several smaller sculls. The club operates from their dock on the reservoir and is open to all ages and ability levels.

   Gail Kongable, president of the Rivanna Rowing Club’s board, gives props to rowing for three reasons. First, she emphasizes “the camaraderie, because you’re learning something new and you’re all together.” Second, “it takes you completely away from your regular life. You’re out on the reservoir, it’s beautiful, and it’s peaceful.” And last, but certainly not least to Ace (who prides himself on his excellent physique), “you get a good, all-over workout. You can work as hard as you want, it’s aerobic, but it’s not stressful on your joints…. It’s just a wonderful thing.”

   Kongable encourages beginners, like you, Boatless, to attend a “Learn to Row Day.” She makes it sound positively delightful: “Anyone who’s just kind of interested can come down and sit in the boat. They can row and they can get some kind of sense of what rowing is. Then they can decide if they want to do it.”

   If you do, go online to rivannarowing.org and fill out a membership form. At first Ace balked at the cost (memberships start at $125 annually), but Kongable explained that membership fees cover “access to all boats at any time, coached sessions in the morning and evening so you can get instruction and feedback, and the Learn to Row class.”

   Who said love was cheap (certainly not Ace!)? You’ll need to pay up, Boatless, if you want to get that lovin’ feelin’ on the scull. Hey, it beats a fork in the eye!

The double doors of an A-frame barn open to an empty hall ending in a wall of windows. The intervening space is bathed in gentle southeastern morning light. The view looks northwest toward the forested backside of Carter Mountain. Charlottesville’s there somewhere, but it’s hidden behind blue mountains that overlap in rising layers. Red bud, white dogwood, trumpet-shaped wild azalea and a well-pruned old peach tree bloom in a forest of color on the convex hill below. At the window, a small vineyard fills the foreground. Rows of trellis wire and wood posts support sinuous vines. The vintner (call him Mathieu) paces the nursery with furrowed intensity. An untended thicket of dandelion, mustard and wild onion sways around his knees.   

For, say, a cool $10 million, the vision could be yours.

   A second generation of vintners is taking root in Virginia’s red clay. Heiresses, rock bands and wealthy Texas cattle families now ferment European Vitis vinifera varieties. Behind the estate walls and farm gates, they are building on the legacy of small farm families that resurrected the craft after Prohibition. Between the wine barrels they are fermenting a culture of intrigue, big money, and intergenerational feuds, and safeguarding the last best hope for agriculture here. Welcome to the curious but wonderful world of winemaking in Virginia.

   Winemakers believe the influence of the land can be tasted in the grapes. As wineries grow, the reverse is also true: The culture of the vine begins to influence the land. Agriculture preserves traditions, places, generations and names, and when that culture changes so does the landscape, for good and for ill.

   The number of vineyards in the state has grown to 87 in 2004 from six in 1979. Comprising 2,500 acres in total, it’s a rare growth sector of agriculture in the Commonwealth. And with the United States Supreme Court this week striking down interstate commerce laws that had banned Virginia wineries from shipping their products directly to customers outside Virginia, the business is poised to grow even more. Charlottesville and Albemarle lie at the heart of the best grape-growing land, with the 21 wineries in the Monti-cello appellation outnumbering the others. On the southeastern aspect of a foothill, just east of the Blue Ridge, is about as good as vineyard land gets in Virginia.

   Which is not so good. The Common-wealth ranks fifth in the country by volume of wine, but it’s difficult to grow vines here and the wines were historically of poor quality. “If there is a way to describe Virginia from a viticultural standpoint, it is variable,” says a Virginia Tech viticulture professor. “And variability is not conducive to high wine quality or the perception of wine quality.” Virginia’s viticulturists, however, like the vine itself, thrive in the face of adversity.

 

Virginia’s First Lady of Wine is Felicia Warburg Rogan at Oak-encroft Winery. Recently named Tourism Person of the Year by the Char-lottesville-Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau, Rogan opened the winery in 1983; 2005 represents her 22nd vintage. Three miles off Barracks Road, Rogan remembers being surrounded by farmland when she moved from New York in 1977 to join her husband on his farm. Then there were only five wineries in the state. Today, Oakencroft is the closest winery to the rapidly growing city and the University.

   When they started the winery, John Rogan had never had wine. “Like most Virginians, he drank Scotch,” Rogan remembers. “He spent a year and a half trying to make wine from these grapes. I called it garage wine.”

   From that humble beginning, Rogan now produces at least a dozen varieties of celebrated Virginia wines. She credits her staff, Philip Ponton, the vineyard manager who planted the first vines on the site, and Riaan Rossouw, a South African winemaker. She points to her Merlot and Chardonnay as two of her personal favorites. This year the winery will also do its first pressings of Viognier (a white wine that grows particularly well in the region), Chambourcin and a rosé, a Bordeaux-style blended wine that is lighter and sweeter.

 

Winemakers mark time in vintages, not years. Their calendars start and end not with holidays but bud break and harvest. May 22 is a high holy day mentioned in whispers, the day when the risk of frost passes. Bud break starts around April 15 and for an agonizing month, each dawn carries the risk that the fragile budding fruit of this year’s harvest will freeze.

   Over a two-week window in late April, the first green tendrils of the coming year’s crop poke from the matching brown buds on spur-pruned cordons of the vine. From Afton to Barboursville, Charlottesville’s wine set opened their doors and gates to let this writer in.

   Gabriele Rausse is the man who brought vinifera to Virginia. Tourism boards like to credit Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson’s grapes died. Rausse’s genius lay in using European vinifera that had been grafted, or joined, with the rootstock of disease-tolerant native grapes.

   No one believed it would work. “When the first Barboursville wine appeared on the market, people started to say we were getting the wine from Italy,” Rausse says in a charming Italian accent. The Department of Agriculture told him he was crazy and warned him not to lead the Virginia farmer astray.

   The man now known as both the patron saint and godfather of Virginia wine was inclined to agree with that assessment. “I have been a loser all my life, starting from school,” he remembers. “So the idea of coming here and doing something which didn’t work was very attractive to me.”

   Thirty years later, Rausse’s small, weathered hands grafted many of the oldest vines in the area. It’s excruciatingly detailed work. “We were doing 100,000 vines per year and I enjoy every graft,” he says. At Simeon Vineyards, later Jefferson Vineyard, he planted 50,000 vines a year.

   Today, Rausse spends his days as the associate director of gardens and grounds at Monticello. His small, eponymous winery ferments grapes from his one-acre vineyard and independent growers. His wine sells on his good name, and he’s not in a rush to post a Web page or respond to orders. If he doesn’t like a crop, he’s free to throw it away (and has). “Everything I do, I do it with my heart and not with my brain,” he says.

 

Good wine is made in the vineyard. “Wine is only a reflection of the grapes,” Fernando Franco tells me while driving through Barboursville Vineyards. “When you have beautiful grapes you have beautiful wine.”

   Theoretically, wine is profoundly simple—it requires a single ingredient. To fill a bottle it takes three pounds of grapes, or the fruit of one vine.

   Franco is the vineyard manager for Barboursville. Touring his farm in a dusty, well-worn farm truck, bud break is well advanced. The Chardonnay leaves are nearly fully formed and he points out miniature grape clusters.

   Franco spends his days in the fields. “This is what I live for all winter long,” he says this sunny afternoon. “For a day like this, being here and being in a beautiful place.” He surveys the rolling hills and the 30 acres newly cleared for planting.

   Owned by an Italian winemaking family, Barboursville is the oldest and biggest winery in this region, producing 30,000 cases a year. The owners have just invested $1 million to renovate an inn next to the Barboursville ruins. The esteemed Palladio Restaurant also captures the tourist dollar.

   Barboursville’s not blessed with an idyllic location, so Franco’s well versed in the vagaries of weather. Early growth puts his vines at heightened risk of spring frost damage. “Grapes are like we are,” he says. “When grapes are under stress they respond to that.”

   When we talk, there’s been frost the previous two weekends. On cold nights, Barboursville uses wind machines to circulate air. The windmill-like machines mix warmer air 150 feet above the ground with the colder air at vine level. Some vineyards rent helicopters. The air 150 feet up can be as much as eight degrees warmer.

   Like children, vines flourish when they must care for themselves. A healthy root system feeds a healthy vine. Rich, loamy soil and irrigation on demand “makes the vines lazy,” Franco says. Irrigation is another technique that distinguishes local vineyards, with some managers shunning it and others embracing it. Left to scavenge, the roots, like the vine, can grow many feet in a year. Some roots reach 90 feet into hillsides. Managing a plant’s vigor is a big challenge here.

   The goal is to grow heavy, ripe grapes within a short window. Sugar content—or brix—of the berry is only one criteria that determines ripeness. “At 23 brix sometimes there is a nice body and a nice tannin, all that expresses in the wine so neatly that once the grapes are in the winery, you can tell from the moment the fermentation stops,” Fernando says. “You can tell already, ‘Wow, this is going to be a great wine.’

   “When I walk through the vineyard and I am ready to harvest,” he adds, “I pick the berry and I crunch the seeds. If the seeds crunch neutral without overpowering green tannins, that is ready for harvest.”

   Wine should be simple, but these are just a few of the influences that control the taste of the grape and ultimately the wine. In the vineyard, the trellising, disease resistance, cold tolerance, myriad site concerns, irrigation and other factors play into the flavor of the grapes.

   In the winery, the age of the barrels, the type of wood, the length and temperature of fermentation, whether the juice moves by a pump or gravity flow and whether whole berries, whole clusters or grapes without skins are fermented all influence the taste of the wine. Not to mention, most important, the variety of grape and blend of wine.

 

For all that Virginia’s vintners fiddle with the factors to approach the essence of grape, many sidestep one aspect: the farm as living organism.

   All over the world, progressive grape growers use simple biological techniques to further refine grape growing. But in Virginia, vineyard managers commonly believe, for example, that 20 fungicide sprays in a season do not influence the character of their grapes.

   Brad McCarthy hopes to change some things. His five-acre Blenheim Vineyard is open to the public only by appointment, and his A-frame winery overlooks pretty country. McCarthy’s grown up in the business, and at 38 he has a top-shelf reputation as a winemaker. “I have been working in vineyards for 19 years, I’ve spent most of my career in cellars,” he says. At White Hall Vineyards, he nabbed two Governor’s Cups—the state’s most prestigious wine award—in the winery’s first five years.

   McCarthy is famous as a winemaker but says, “It’s all in the vineyard. I am kind of the anti-winemaker. If I have to make wine, there are problems in the vineyard and I am having to work it.”

   He’s trying to bring international techniques and a different business model to the local industry. Many wineries sell as much as 90 percent of their wine from tasting rooms. “Once you have someone across the tasting bar in a beautiful setting,” McCarthy says, “… you can sell them anything.” He wants to rely more on independent growers and produce wines that sell in wine shops, “like all the wines in the world.”

   The exuberant and curly-locked McCarthy is a plant geek, jumping up to grab a seed box, change the music or pour some wine. He smokes while he drinks—heresy—and admits he’s a maverick.

   He experiments with a growing method called biodynamic. Conventional agriculture dismisses biodynamics as modern alchemy and so much hocus-pocus. But McCarthy saw the best vineyards in France doing it and his interest was piqued. Biodynamics treats the farm as an organism and works to bring all elements into balance, using farm animals to recycle nutrients, for example. Biodynamics translates into more sustainable and ecological growing practices and incorporates many organic principles. McCarthy still sprays but his vineyard is “organic where we can [be].”

   “It starts with the soil,” he says. He’s sent his soil for microbial analysis, bucking the farmers’ holy trinity of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. He’s sowing a plant mix that includes other men’s weeds—yarrow, crimson clover and alfalfa—to attract beneficial insects. He’s trying to work with nature, not against it.

   “To be at a point in your life where you are dynamic with nature, the involvement with your environment and the world around you, I find endlessly fascinating,” he says. “There are endless variables. You never know how it is going to go.… My life is dynamic.”

 

Bill Moses carries the business end of the wine stick. The CEO of Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyards and chair of the Virginia Wine Board is retired from the entertainment business in New York, “where they don’t bother to stab you in the back.”

   Moses is happy to discuss Wine Board initiatives, but not Kluge Estates. (They’ve had enough, thanks.) Moses’ co-chair on another wine board, the Wine Study Work Group, was the State Secretary of Commerce. With some money and friends in high places, the wine business should be going somewhere. But of all the wine sold in Virginia, only 4 percent is made here. The Wine Board’s goal is to double that in the next decade.

   One proposal of the Wine Study Work Group is a Vintners Quality Assurance label that would set minimum standards for labeling, say, a “chardonnay” a Chardonnay. Kluge Estates is also working closely with Piedmont Virginia Community College on a vineyard-management technical course.

   The Wine Board runs interference with county boards of supervisors that try to limit winery operations. A farm winery license permits an unusual combination of agriculture, processing and retail sales. Some localities have tried to limit the number of events a winery can hold, the number of cases they can produce or whether they can have a restaurant.

   “As chair of the Wine Board, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t have a problem with a board of supervisors somewhere,” Moses says. Greene and Nelson counties are generally tolerant of wineries, but Moses’ Kluge Estate has butted heads with the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on its attempts to build residential housing at Kluge Estates.

   Moses is well positioned to understand the effect of wineries on rural preservation. In 2004, Kluge Estate’s proposal to build 32 homes on its agricultural land created an uproar in the neighborhood. The special-use permit for Vineyard Estates was denied, but Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses were undeterred. They’re now building Vineyard Estates in accordance with regular zoning codes. (Moses would like to point out that they’ve also set aside some land in a conservation easement as well. King Family Estates has, too. Many winery owners say they’d like to follow suit.)

   “People pass their vineyards through generations,” he says. “No one subdivides and puts on housing complexes because the value of the land is in the yield, not the subdivision rights. We think this type of farming…lends itself to more aggressive rural preservation than almost any other type of work.”

   On the Wine Board, Moses’ job is to help all the local wineries succeed. “We can’t be a great winery from nowhere. A rising tide lifts all boats,” he says.

   Kluge Estates will be well positioned when the water starts rising. Last year they added 44 acres of grapes (they started with 34). In the next two years, they’ll plant another 130 to 140 acres, for a total of about 265, producing 50,000 cases a year. If all goes as planned, they’ll be the largest winery in Virginia and one of the most significant on the Atlantic Coast.

 

In Nelson County, there’s an small winery that represents both the industry of the past and of the future. Afton Mountain Vineyards started in 1988. Tom Corpora, owner of the vineyard, pulls up to an interview on his tractor. The old Chardonnay vines in his yard are thick as heads at their base. Corpora is an elder statesman of Virginia winemaking and a cantankerous old farmer, weathered as
a root.

   “I don’t know whether people can get into it the same way we did now,” he says slowly. “Now people are coming in with a lot of money.” Large lots in Nelson County can sell for $20,000 an acre, and it costs at least $10,000 an acre to convert bare earth to vineyard.

   Before he got into wine, Corpora was a journalist working for United Press International and NBC. He was the bureau chief in Vietnam at the end of the war and then in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Sinko. (She’s the enologist, or winemaker, at Afton.)

   When we walk around his vineyard on April 15, the buds have just broken to reveal newly hatched leaves.

   For all the growth in the industry, Afton Mountain is one of the few Virginia wineries actually turning a profit. Corpora laughs about new vineyards spending big bucks to build more shelves in a warehouse; an educated guess says less than half of the 21 local wineries are profitable. What with waiting for the harvest, the winemaking and aging, it can be three to five years before there’s any income to start recouping capital. It’s eight years minimum to break even, and that’s a
big success.

   “If you have to go out and buy land to put in a vineyard, there is no way to make the numbers work,” Virginia Tech viticulture professor Tony Wolf says. “I wouldn’t do it.”

   But Tom Corpora’s got it all: 11 and a half acres looking back across a valley, southeast exposure, a slope just so and great natural beauty. “You can see it on foggy days,” Corpora says, “where you get a buildup of fog down in the valley and we are clear here. The same happens with cold air. It will just drain out
past us.

   “It is hard work and the work doesn’t get easier and I don’t get younger. So…but yeah, this has been good,” he whispers and stops.

   He looks out the window. “ You can see that we have a wind again… This is a good life… It is something that I can continue to enjoy doing as long as I breathe.”

 

Grape expectations

What do grapes need to flourish?

Vines will grow anywhere, but grapes prefer conditions just so—watery but not too wet, sunny but not too hot, cold enough to impede pests. Professor Tony Wolf at Virginia Tech has mapped the best sites by topography, slope, aspect (or orientation), air movement and soil.

   Altitude is the controlling factor. Cold air can kill a year’s crop or, worse, a whole vine. Cold air gathers in low-lying valleys so the best site, surprisingly, is the side of a mountain, where the air always moves.

   Grapes prefer morning light. A convex site drains better than a concave one. Grapes don’t like their feet wet, so drainage is important. Everyone in the wine craft speaks with great passion about the beauty of a great site. It is one of the great romances of wine, the idea that you can taste on the palate the place where the grapes are grown, the terroir. Professor Wolf makes a science of the art. “I take a clinical view,” he says, “You have one chance to get it right.”—L.P.