A couple of summers ago I gathered my family, some home-cooked food, a photographer and a food writer together for a late lunch in the Virginia wine country. My family and I had recently moved to Virginia from NYC and in trying to shake off the Manhattan-centric blues, had discovered the riches of our newly local wine region.

I was approached by Anthology Magazine to host a dinner party for my dancing family, paired with local wines, smack dab in the middle of Virginia wine country, and I mean literally in the middle of it. We feasted, fancy picnic style, in between the lush Virginia vines of Paradise Springs Winery, just outside of DC. The stuff of dreams, a lot of cooking and prep went into this dinner, along with a lot of honest to God sweat as it was a 95 degree day, but there were definitely no tears. It was one for the books, er, magazines. As the story was only available in print, I’ve had a few requests to post it on the blog, so here it is dear readers- Enjoy and Cin Cin.

Anthology Family Issue Summer 2014

Dining Among the Vines
Text by Anna Watson Carl
Photography by Amy Dickerson
Styled by Kelly d’Amboise

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