Tag: Food & Drink

Hand me my spears!

Nothing heralds the arrival of spring like asparagus. Fat or thin, the spears rise obediently with the season, perishing long before a tomato might make its acquaintance on a plate. Sure, you can buy asparagus year-round now, but why defy nature? These dishes from around town honor the beauties during their fleeting, precious prime.

At Revolutionary Soup, a springtime soup of local asparagus and shiitake mushrooms makes the weekly rounds. It’s light, bright, and vegetarian.

At tavola, garganelli (a more rustic version of penne) (1) gets dolled up for the primavera with asparagus, sweet peas, spring vidalia onions, preserved lemon, cream, mint, and pecorino tartufo—a sheep’s milk cheese studded with black truffle.

Blue Light Grill’s new chef Ian Boden (of the sadly shuttered Staunton Grocery) centers his debut menu around all things seasonal and his charred asparagus salad (2) with maple-glazed shiitakes in an egg yolk vinaigrette sings of spring.

Palladio’s insalata mista of local lettuces, shaved asparagus, and toasted pistachios dressed in a champagne vinaigrette and topped with a parmesan crisp is delicate and delectable.
The Clifton Inn combines charred asparagus (3) with spring onions, bacon, and dashi for a flavorful bed beneath grilled tuna.

Orzo Kitchen & Wine Bar stirs up a risotto—with asparagus, spinach, shallot, garlic, and tomato confit (4)—that’s as colorful and fragrant as the season.

Horse & Hound Gastropub gives vegetarians (or otherwise) a most satisfying option with its sesame-crusted, tempura-fried tofu over a risotto made with quinoa, scallions, and asparagus.—Megan J. Headley

Scent of a spear
It’s the sulfur-containing compounds in asparagus that make our urine smell as soon as 15 minutes after eating. Early investigators of this phenomenon thought that genetics had divided the world into stinkers and non-stinkers—just like tongue-rollers and non-tongue-rollers. But in the 1980s, after researchers had the foresight to waft a non-stinker’s urine under a stinker’s nose, they discovered that everyone’s urine stinks post-asparagus—it’s just that 20 percent of us can’t smell it.

The ABCs of asparagi
Whiter shade of pale
White asparagus has been denied light while growing and has a milder flavor than green. Purple asparagus is higher in sugar and lower in fiber, but high in cancer-fighting phytochemicals.

Hunting and gathering
Choose bunches with plump, tightly closed tips and stems that aren’t dried out. Stalks should be bright green and firm. Kept cool and damp, uncooked asparagus will stay fresh for two to three days in the refrigerator. Store spears upright in a container with the stems wading in an inch of water or wrap the ends in moist paper towels and drop the bundle into a plastic bag.

Be gentle
Steam, boil, broil, grill, or roast asparagus, but don’t overdo it or you’ll lose its bright color and delicate flavor. Depending on the method you choose and the thickness of your spears, cooking will take from three to eight minutes. If you boil or steam them, be ready with a bowl of ice water for an immediate place to plunge them.

To peel or not to peel
Using a vegetable peeler to take off the outer layer of the asparagus stalk eliminates stringiness and allows the tips and stems to cook evenly. Some snap off the fibrous end, but that’s a waste of a perfectly good spear. Peeling renders all but the very end of the stem edible.—M.J.H.

Did you know?
Under ideal conditions, an asparagus spear can grow 10″ in a 24-hour period. In Croatia in 2010, five stalks were found that measured 12′ long. Talk about miracle grow!

Urban farming is one of the hottest trends in food right now. Maybe it’s the economy, or maybe it’s that nothing beats the satisfaction of eating food that you grew and dug up yourself. Lush lawns are being replaced with veggie gardens, flower beds with compost piles, and storage sheds with chicken coops.

As the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels and the second largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions, it’s about time America goes through a “green” phase. Growing your own food reduces fuel consumption and our carbon footprint, encourages healthy eating habits, and stretches a family’s food budget, but can anyone with a patch of grass grow their own? Or is this just another hobby for the money- and time-rich?

Williams-Sonoma, the culinary behemoth that capitalizes on a gourmand’s need for copper pots, panini presses, and demi-glace, just launched a line called Agrarian, giving well-to-do GYO-ers a one-stop digital shop for seeds, plants, gardening tools, cheesemaking kits, beds and planters, beekeeping equipment, chicken coops, canning and preserving equipment, and more. There are $110 burlap totes, $300 copper pitchforks, and $80 fermentation pots. Even the shiny $700 blender under “Healthy Living” is photographed on a weathered wooden table to hammer home the homespun-ness of it all. Clearly, the site’s a playground for the 1 percent, and most of them would probably sooner hire someone to till their land than do it themselves.

For the rest of us, we have places like Fifth Season Gardening Co. for affordable gardening supplies and Radical Roots for plants and shrubs. Need a vision or jumpstart for your garden? C’ville Foodscapes, a worker-owned cooperative, provides various design, installation, and maintenance services for anyone wanting to add food-producing gardens to his home or business. Services range from $75 to $135 for a design consultation and $600 and up for an entire site transformation and installation. Low-income individuals or families can apply to receive a free garden system complete with a garden bed, rain barrel, and compost bin through the Garden Grants Program. Since its launch in 2009, C’ville Foodscapes has completed more than 85 projects and six grants.

Community gardens like the ones at Piedmont Virginia Community College, University of Virginia, Friendship Court, and The Haven, as well as the Edible Schoolyard projects at Buford Middle School, Cale Elementary School, and Clark Elementary School all welcome volunteers and are a good starting place to learn more about urban gardening while lending a helping hand. Or, if you have agrarian know-how but no space, lease one of the 73 community garden plots in Meadowcreek Gardens, off Morton Drive behind the English Inn.

And, don’t forget that one shop’s trash may be another garden’s treasure. Last year, the crew at Shenandoah Joe noticed an increasing number of people asking for leftover coffee grounds for composting (they lower the pH of the soil and act as a source of nitrogen). Now, every week, 15 people drop off five-gallon buckets outside the backdoor of the Preston roaster, picking them up on Sunday filled to the brim with grounds that would have otherwise been discarded. One bucket has “garden steroids” written on it, one belongs to a guy who cultivates mushrooms in the grounds, and another will go home with an area chef. Mas Tapas’ Tomas Rahal grows herbs and everything from collards to raspberries to supplement his Spanish import-centric menu in a 10’x10′ space outside the restaurant’s back door and in 12 4’x12′ beds in a plot nearby.

Mas isn’t the only restaurant in town featuring urban-grown produce on its menus. Laura McGurn tends to Zinc’s patio garden, from which freshly plucked tatsoi, swiss chard, mizuna, and kale becomes the spring salad. Arugula, scallions, nasturtiums, and peas aren’t far behind, and owner Vu Nguyen is planning a rooftop garden at Moto Pho Co., his Vietnamese place opening across the street in June. Mark Gresge, chef/owner of L’etoile, has a small garden that’s supplying the restaurant this spring with lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, sweet onions, and various beans. “It makes for some fresh, exciting eating. A little dirt on the fingers seasons the pot nicely,” said Gresge.

When so much of our lives feel beyond our control, gardening gives us some semblance of it back. We decide what we put into the soil and then onto our plates. Self-sufficiency is at the heart of the American dream, and land (and the right to work it) helps us to achieve it. Whatever the reason, green is most definitely the new black.

What’s struck me more than anything over the past three years as I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know our area winemakers through this column, is how they consider themselves farmers above all else. No matter how skilled they are at making up for a bad vintage in the cellar, they all seem to prefer dirt, tractors, and pruning shears to chemicals, tanks, and graduated cylinders.

John Kiers comes from a farming family and planted 20 acres of vines near Staunton 12 years ago. He sells close to half his crop to local winemakers who consider his fruit so good that it walks straight into the bottle. Kiers makes 1,500 cases of wine a year under his own Ox-Eye Vineyards label, but he’s never convinced of how good it really is. “I am completely comfortable with the farming side of the job, but still lose sleep over the winemaking side of it,” he said.

An “anti-winemaker,” as Brad McCarthy, who made wine at both White Hall Vineyards and Blenheim Vineyards, has referred to himself, is a notion others share. Jake Busching, formerly of Pollak Vineyards and currently of Mt. Juliet and Grace Estates, grew up on a cattle farm in the Midwest and uses dirt as his guide. He prefers the term “wine grower” to winemaker.

When Gabriele Rausse came to Virginia in 1976, he had a degree in agronomy and knew how to grow grapes. He succeeded where Jefferson failed by grafting European vinifera with disease-tolerant native rootstocks, and in his 36 years here, has personally touched nearly every vine that now thrives in our burgeoning region.

I’d be hard-pressed to put Rausse’s thoughts into words better than his own: “To be a farmer means to deal with Mother Nature, and Mother Nature is a difficult partner. She does what she wants and she does it when she wants, but the results can be beautiful. It is actually a matter of figuring out how to deal with her. You have to be patient and observe and accept that you cannot control her. Once the grapes are detached from the plant, you become a chemist. I know that if I get beautiful grapes, I don’t have to be a winemaker because the wine will be beautiful.”

Michel Chapoutier, a son of the famous Rhône Valley producer, wrote: “To make a wine is 12 months of work in the vineyards, one month in the cellar. The wine grower is 12 times more important than the winemaker.”

The goal behind making wine is simple: to grow ripe grapes and then ferment their juice into wine. The FDA has approved over 200 additives for wine, yet it can be made—and well—with just one ingredient.

Vineyards under cover
Between a super mild winter and a positively summery March, buds broke earlier than ever this year—by about two weeks. Even in “normal” years, winemakers bite their nails every night between bud break and May 20 or so, when the risk of frost travels north.

Young shoots are very vulnerable to frost damage, so wineries go to great lengths to keep cold air from settling on the vines. A vine’s best protection is being planted on a slope where cold air tumbles downhill, but since that’s not a change that can be made immediately following a frost advisory, wineries often have a plan.

Frost warnings two weeks ago led Barboursville and Keswick vineyards to turn on their wind machines and King Family Vineyards and Mt. Juliet both had helicopters on standby (although only King Family called them into flight). Both are an expensive way to keep air moving. Wind turbines cost about $20,000 a pop and helicopters rent for $1,000 an hour, but compare that to the cost of losing an entire vintage of Chardonnay.

Fires via smudge pots, hay bales, and propane heaters are certainly a cheaper method, but not nearly as effective since heat travels upwards in a column rather than mixing higher, warmer air with vine-level, colder air.

What left our area unscathed in the end was that the dewpoint never collided with the temperature. We dipped below 30 degrees one night, but the dew point was only 24. Vines can protect themselves against temperatures as low as 27 as long as the dew point isn’t that high.

Winning the award for the most stylish protective measure against the frosts was Keswick Estate’s Courtside Vineyard, where they draped the vines with vintage Laura Ashley fabric left over from the property’s original construction.

Oyster purists insist on consuming their sea creatures unadorned and straight from the shell, but the uninitiated might want to work their way up to a slurpfest with these half dozen cooked versions—from poached to broiled—on restaurant menus around town.

Rhett’s River Grill serves Oysters Rockefeller—they’re topped with spinach, garlic, cream, Pernod, and breadcrumbs and then broiled ’til browned. Invented by a New Orleans restaurant in 1840, the dish was named after the wealthiest man in America at the time because of its rich, luxurious sauce.

For an addictive, down-home start to your meal, try Maya’s crunchy cornmeal-crusted oysters dipped in the house rémoulade, which is fancy French talk for a spiced-up tartar sauce.

Tempo poaches three plump oysters in a sauce made from muddled raspberries, shallot, lemon, sherry vinegar, grainy mustard, and cream and then perches them atop rounds of confited potatoes. A spoonful of the delightfully pink poaching liquid and a scattering of microgreens finish the dish.

Oysters go ethnic at Mono Loco, where crispy oysters are combined with shredded pork and jalapeño crema in the Nola Loca Burrito.

The creamy oyster stew at Tastings of Charlottesville is loosely based on a recipe from New York’s Grand Central Oyster Bar with Worcestershire, celery salt, and plenty of butter. A sprinkle of Westminster oyster crackers add some salty crunch.

At the Ivy Inn, fried oysters top a grits cake which comes alongside grilled local trout with pinto beans and kale, all sauced in a smoked bacon butter sauce.­—Megan J. Headley

A festival of mollusks
At last year’s inaugural Blue Ridge Oyster Festival, organizers Justin Billcheck and Nick Attaway knew they had a hit on their hands when 1,800 people showed up at Devils Backbone Brewing Company in Nelson County. This year’s festival is on Saturday, April 21, from 1 to 7pm and promises to be better than ever with plenty to eat (look for Ward Oyster Company’s raw, steamed, and grilled oysters harvested from nearby Mobjack Bay and The Rock Barn’s hot dogs, brats, and andouille sausages), plenty to drink (like beer from Devils Backbone and Starr Hill and wine from Blenheim and Cardinal Point Vineyards), plenty to listen to (four live musical acts), and plenty to win (two dozen silent auction items with proceeds benefiting the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge). There’ll be an area for kids to play (under 12-ers get in free) and a tented area called the Mobjack Lounge for VIPers who want to splash out a bit more in exchange for all-you-can-eat steamed oysters, four concession tickets, and a commemorative glass.

General admission tickets cost $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Attaway sums it up best: “Everyone will enjoy beautiful scenery, good food, and great beer and wine with friends and family—aren’t those all the best things in life?”—M.J.H.

Shuck off!
At the festival, you’ll see sister shuckers and world champions Clementine Macon and Debra Pratt in action, but we’ve got our own speed shucker here in town. Johnny Jackson at the Blue Light Grill’s raw bar shucks anywhere from three to five hundred oysters every evening where they celebrate Happy Hour Sunday through Thursday from 4:30pm to 7pm with a half dozen oysters for $10. Pratt’s record is 26 oysters in one minute, so we challenged Jackson to a shuck off. The pressure was on, but by entering through the hinge instead of the lip (a Southern secret), he had an impressive 15 open and ready for a-slurping.

Designing your dream house, wedding, or wardrobe is a cakewalk with Pinterest—the virtual pinboard that keeps magazine clippings from cluttering your life—but Paradox Pastry owner Jenny Peterson has always been able to visualize her designs. It’s a handy talent to have when the bread-and-butter of your job is producing an average of five multitiered, highly decorated special-occasion cakes each week out of your home kitchen. Now, less than a month from opening her dessert café in the Glass Building on a bread-and-water budget, her visual eye is more valuable than ever.

While the dessert café model is decidedly European (Peterson lived overseas for 13 years and fondly remembers catching up with friends in Germany over coffee and a slice of “kuchen”), the style is all her own. “I’ve known the way I wanted it to look forever,” she said.

For the space, light, airy, and interesting were on her checklist. She considered a spot in the Water Street parking garage, but felt the weight of concrete upon her. When she saw the 1,800 square foot space between The X Lounge and Bluegrass Grill & Bakery, complete with 22′ ceilings, a mezzanine, and wire rope hand railings, she knew she’d found her space. “It’s industrial and kicky and the metal work reminds me of Paris,” she said.

Although Peterson’s dreamt her dream long enough to have everything from colors to glassware in mind, she did seek advice from design professionals. Her brother, an award-winning architect in New York, came down to see the space and pointed out its imperfections. The bathroom and storage room are both upstairs, for instance, but they were quirks she knew she could live with. Local architect Chuck Dickey incorporated her visions into drawings and general contractor Clay Meili from Monster Mechanics is hammering those drawings into reality.

The reality won’t match her mind’s eye to a T though. When Peterson presented her three chosen colors to her graphic designer, she left the meeting going back to the drawing board for two of them. “She told me they weren’t restaurant colors and that I needed to pick a red and a yellow. I hate yellow!” Peterson said. After one $1,000 mistake somewhere in the “curry” family, she settled on walls swathed in “Adventure Orange” and “Spicy Hue” to accent the “Slate Tile Blue” that she’s always envisioned for the ceiling. The result, even amidst wet concrete and fluorescent lighting, is warm and sweet tooth-inducing. And, as for that logo, it’s an urban and industrial amalgamation of elements from the various rounds of designs, in the shop’s colors.

An entryway wall will showcase pedestaled examples of Peterson’s studio cakes. Downstairs, diners will sit at high-top tables with light from the giant front windows streaming in, and an eight-person farm table will serve as seating on the mezzanine—­Peterson’s favorite spot. Paradox’s baking area, where all the magic happens, will be open air, to give patrons full access to the action (and smells). It will serve the bakers well, too. “The best part of making food for people is seeing them enjoying it,” said Peterson.

A rotating variety of layer cakes, pies, tarts, and cobblers will fill the display case, and treats like whoopie pies will grace glass jars on top. Mornings come early at bakeries, so by 7am, Tuesday through Saturday, scones and multigrain muffins will tempt us. Savory offerings include salads, sandwiches, gougères, palmiers, and quiche which, ABC-license willing, will taste especially good with a glass of wine or beer (Paradox’ll stay open until 8pm on weekdays and until 10pm on weekends).

Peterson will leave the highly-designed work to the studio cakes (a side of her business that’s likely to grow exponentially given her new visibility and Charlottesville’s popularity as a wedding destination), so don’t expect to see chocolate squiggles or coulis smears on the plates. And, unless otherwise requested, slices of cake, pie, or cobbler will come unadorned. Thick European-style hot chocolate will be served in Irish coffee cups with or without freshly whipped cream (and soon, perhaps, a homemade peppermint marshmallow). Shenandoah Joe coffee will flow from an air pot or from stainless steel French presses. All part of her vision, these were the fun and easy decisions for Peterson and manager Maureen Scott, her friend of eight years.

There have been setbacks, like the plumber’s discovery that the floor was built with reinforced concrete, but it wouldn’t be a dream-come-true without them. It just means bringing in a bigger jackhammer.

Looks are everything. Wait, what? No matter what your mom tells you, looks do matter—especially in a crowded marketplace. When it comes to wine, unless we’ve had a bottle before, we base our buying decision on its label. And thank goodness there are producers who make downright ridiculous labels. How else would we know which ones to avoid? I’m certain there are exceptions, but I often find that the “punnier” the name or the fluffier the animal, the crappier the wine. In this age of wine-drinking millennials with visual ADD, how do wineries make sure to get their labels right?

Darcey Ohlin-Lacy, owner of Watermark Design, a local graphic and web design agency that counts eight Virginia wineries as clients, thinks packaging is the most important marketing tool a producer has. “Having and presenting a strong brand is the best way to stand out in a saturated market,” said Ohlin-Lacy, who landed her first winery client, Afton Mountain Vineyards, in 2009 when the Smith family bought the 30-year-old vineyard from another family. The Smiths knew they had to come up with a new label that would stand out, as well as reflect the vineyard’s new ownership and personality.

“There’s a joke in the industry about not telling the winemakers that for many customers it’s more important what’s on the outside of the bottle than the inside,” said Hunter Smith, Afton Mountain Vineyards’ marketing manager. He and his parents collaborated with Watermark on a label that combines bold colors with a silhouetted outline of Afton Mountain and the vineyard’s initials, AMV. The entire design process, which also included their new slogan (“Grapes don’t grow in ugly places”) and website, took six months and won them an Overall Excellence in Marketing award from the Central Virginia Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

Gimmicks abound on the crowded wine shelves, all in hopes of making that big first impression. Besides puns (Cardinal Zin, Marilyn Merlot, K Syrah) and animals (a recent study revealed that 18 percent of wine labels use critters for appeal), there are dirty names (Horse’s Ass, Frog’s Piss, Bitch, etc.) and downright smutty ones (Cleavage Creek, Big Ass Red, and G Spot). Some slap on a family crest or a stately chateau to woo traditionalists—even if the winery was just established in 2010. There are labels with braille, peel off labels that allow you to keep a record of what you’ve just consumed, and labels that double as original artwork. You can get party-specific bottles (like the eye-rolling “This party better be worth the gas it took to get here”), and why not give a bottle of Liquid Panty Remover to your next date? “Wine buyers around here are very educated, so producers need to focus on being different without going so far that they lose respect,” said Ohlin-Lacy.

So, how does one develop a label that turns heads without turning us off? “We try to match the personality of the winery and strive to tell the story of each. In Virginia, that’s easy because every winery is so different,” she said. For Ankida Ridge Vineyard, a family-run, micro-boutique vineyard in Amherst, Watermark Design incorporated four stars on its label (to represent the owner’s four children) as well as a sheep (herds of them live on the property fertilizing the soil). The result is an elegant label that matches the high-quality wine and is a crowning exception to my stigma against labels with fluffy animals.

When Michael Shaps and Philip Stafford first started bottling under their Virginia Wineworks label about five years ago, their bottles featured a pop arty rendition of two men—one bearded and one moustached and wearing overalls—and women, who statistically buy the majority of wine in our country, weren’t drawn to it. They hired Watermark to rebrand the packaging. It’s still colorful and eye-catching, yet more gender-neutral.

And what about the cost of hiring design professionals to help you make that important first impression? “It’s something many wineries overlook, relative to the expenses they encounter in the cellar. But for the price of a few new barrels and some real thinking-cap time, we created an award-winning marketing campaign,” said Smith. Now that Virginia’s the fifth largest wine producer in the nation and receiving tons of media attention, that’s nothing to shake a stick at. “Our wineries are now competing on the same level as California, so we have to appear on the same level too,” said Ohlin-Lacy.

Commemorate this
Twenty-three Virginia wineries, including Monticello AVA’s Keswick Vineyards and Democracy Vineyards, are creating special Civil War 150th Anniversary wine labels for the wine-drinking history buffs out there. A pocket-sized passport with winery and Civil War battlefield information will serve as your guide as you aim to get a stamp on each page.

What’s not to love about a doughnut? It’s sweet, deep-fried dough for goodness sakes. Here’re a baker’s dozen of Charlottesville’s “holiest” delights.

Row by row, left to right:

Carpe Donut’s once-roving cart selling irresistible apple cider doughnuts (and pudding-thick hot chocolate) is permanently parked behind C’ville Coffee, but will travel for events. Grab one from the brick-and-mortar store nearby in McIntire Plaza.

Doughnut Connection offers traditional rings, cake, or holes, and fills them, glazes them, or sprinkles them. Choosing’s tough, but raspberry jelly is a sure bet.

Dunkin’ Donuts has been in the biz since 1950, but they keep the menu fresh with scrumptious creations like their tangy-meets-sweet glazed sour cream doughnut.

Foods of All Nations sells a cruller that would make the Germans proud—they’re fried ’til crispy and coated with enough glaze to sweeten any coffee break.

Entenmann’s are boxed in grocery stores nationwide, but they’re still one tasty doughnut—especially the crumb-topped ones.

Krispy Kreme’s blinking “Hot Now” sign tempted townies for seven years, but now we’re limited to getting a glazed dozen at grocery stores and heating them up ourselves.

Starbucks’ ubiquitous chains couldn’t sell coffee without doughnuts and the glazed old-fashioned doughnut is dense and ideal for dunking.

Spudnuts sells out of its potato flour-based doughnuts every day and only the early birds get the yummy blueberry ones.

Whole Foods may be known for health foods, but its pastry case has plenty to drool over, including the chocolate-coated and custard-filled doughnuts.

Baker’s Palette fries and glazes ’em up fresh at the City Market to balance out the healthier stuff on offer.

Brookville Restaurant won’t sell them by the dozen, but Chef Keevil’s fried dough-
nuts filled with homemade apple butter and coated with cinnamon sugar will end your meal with a smile.

Chaps makes you decide between the delicious homemade doughnuts (made every Wednesday!) and equally delicious homemade ice cream. Perhaps both is the answer.
Carter Mountain Orchard grows apples and peaches and then makes to-die-for doughnuts with their ciders.—Megan J. Headley

Time to make the doughnuts
For Spudnut owners Mike and Lori Fitzgerald, doughnut time comes at 1am six days a week, just as it has for the past 42 years. That’s how long the shop, which stands as the final East Coast relic of a chain that once numbered 600, has been open on Avon Street.

“You have to be insane to want to do this,” said Mike, whose own insanity comes from seeing people satisfied. “Doughnuts are like snow—they make everybody happy.” The shop’s 82-cent glazed is the best seller (though you’ll also find chocolate, cinnamon, coconut, blueberry, apple cinnamon, cherry cinnamon and a variety of cake doughnuts) and the recipe, which substitutes potato flour for a fluffier result, has never changed. Lori’s father, who ran the place before, always told Mike that it was “more art than science.” Whatever they don’t sell by their 2pm closing goes to area hospitals, giving dragging employees a pick-me-up. So how many doughnuts do they make every night? “A whole lot,” said Mike.—M.J.H.

Is that all?
The standing record for the most powdered doughnuts eaten in three minutes is held by Shamus Petherick of Australia, who ate six in 2010. Seems that opponents get stuck at four.

Tour de Doughnut
Every year in Staunton, Illinois, more than 1,000 cyclists compete in a 30-mile race in which riders’ times are reduced by five minutes for each doughnut they consume during two pitstops.

Spring’s sprung early everywhere this year and with the buds already breaking on the vines, wineries, breweries, and cideries are ramping up for the year with exciting events and happenings. Here are a few ways to get out this month to drink in the beauty of our backyard.

Easter weekend
Get closer to nature April 7 at Pollak Vineyards from 5-7pm, when Wildlife Center of Virginia president and co-founder Ed Clark brings his longest-standing winged ambassador, Junior the Golden Eagle, for a meet-and-greet in wine country. Tickets are $25 per person ($15 of which will be donated to the Wildlife Center, which, since its founding in 1982, has treated close to 60,000 animals) and will include a glass of Pollak wine and some nibbles. Call (540) 456-8844 to reserve your ticket and visitwildlifecenter. org for other Wings over Wine Country and Wings over Brewpub events.

On Sunday, April 8 from noon-3pm, enjoy a four-course, wine-paired Easter Sunday brunch at Veritas Vineyard & Winery for $65 per person (inclusive of gratuity). Call (540) 456-8000 ext. 108 for reservations.

Hump day fun
On Wednesday, April 12 from 6-8pm, head to Blenheim Vineyards to learn more about viognier, Virginia’s recently named state grape. Assistant winemaker Greg Hirson will discuss the history of viognier and then lead a tasting of examples from around the world to serve as comparison to Virginia’s style and expression of the grape. The class costs $35. Call 293-5366 for your reservation.

TJ’s birthday weekend
Celebrate the Prez’s 269th birthday a day late on Saturday, April 14 from 1-6pm at Jefferson Vineyards’ annual Meritage Vertical Tasting. Taste every vintage of Meritage it’s produced (that’ll be 10 this year) paired with hearty hors d’oeuvres while you chat with winemaker Andy Reagan about his blending and aging process. The event costs $40 per person and reservations are required. Call 977-3042 to secure your spot.

At Barboursville Vineyards on Saturday, April 14 and Sunday, April 15 from 11am-4:30pm, sample the 2011 reds straight from the barrel for insight into winemaker Luca Paschina’s decisions on the oak and aging recipes for the valuable older vintages. Artisan cheeses from Caromont Farms and fresh-baked bread from Palladio Restaurant will keep your palate focused. The barrel-tasting costs $25 per person and does not require advanced notice.

Earth weekend
On Saturday, April 21 from 2-6pm, taste more than 90 wines from two dozen area vineyards at the first annual Taste of Monticello Wine Trail Wine Festival at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion. Live music, craft and food vendors, and 30-minute wine education sessions will keep everyone entertained. VIP tickets, which include parking, an early 1pm entry, lunch catered by C&O, a tasting glass, and time with participating winemakers, cost $75. General admission tickets purchased in advance are $29 and go up to $35 on the day. Buy a favorite bottle at the festival and bring it to dinner at Blue Light Grill, Cinema Taco, Mono Loco, Positively 4th Street, or Ten for a discounted $5 corkage fee.

Sunday brunch at Blue Mountain Brewery is always a treat (especially the Double H sausage gravy over buttermilk biscuits), but on April 22, the Nelson County brew pub’s offering $5 off every purchase of its 68-ounce growlers, which are better for the environment and for your fridge. From 2:30-5pm, listen to live bluegrass while you dine.

Earth Day’s as good a day as any to turn your focus from the wine to the vines and on April 22, Keswick Vineyards winemaker Stephen Barnard will lead walking tours through the vineyard (choose 11am-1pm or 2-4pm). The $50 cost ($40 for wine club members) includes a boxed lunch and glass or two of wine. Call 244-3341 for reservations.

Farm days
Get excited about the growing season on Saturday, April 28 from 11am-5pm when Foggy Ridge Cider hosts local growers from Fat Bear Farm to showcase its asparagus and fresh peas in two recipes that pair beautifully with Foggy Ridge’s range of ciders. The $8 cost includes some asparagus and early season greens to take home.