10/07/2026
Dinner Party Does Virginia
October is Virginia W**e Month, and it feels like the right time to start something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I’m a Virginia native, but I spent nearly all of my adult life in the Northeast. It’s also where I worked in restaurants, became a w**e professional, and really learned to understand w**e through the lens of place—how climate, soil, elevation, grape variety, farming, and the people making the w**e all shape what ends up in the bottle.
Of course, Virginia came up in my w**e studies. But compared to the pages and pages devoted to Burgundy, Bordeaux, Piedmont, or the Loire, Virginia was a much smaller part of the conversation (honestly, only about a paragraph). I knew the regions. I knew the grapes. And I think, without really realizing it, I started to understand Virginia through those familiar reference points: Bordeaux varieties grown here, Cabernet Franc compared to the Loire, and so on.
Now that I’m back in Virginia—and tasting more and more of the w**es being made here—I’m realizing how incomplete that picture is.
The more Virginia w**e I taste, the less interested I am in comparing it to somewhere else.
Virginia is its own place. It has its own soils, elevations, climate, growing challenges, grape varieties, people, and history. And there isn’t one singular style of “Virginia w**e.” There’s so much happening here, often on a very small scale, that I want to understand more deeply.
So that’s what we’re going to do.
I want to get out of the textbook and into the vineyards. I want to walk the sites, meet the growers and w**emakers, understand why they’re planting what they’re planting, hear what works and what doesn’t, and taste the w**es in the places where they’re actually made.
For me, this is a rediscovery of Virginia w**e—personal, professional, and admittedly a little academic. I grew up here, learned w**e somewhere else, and now get to bring those two things together with a completely different perspective.
The question I keep coming back to is: What does Virginia w**e taste like when we stop trying to explain it through somewhere else?
I don’t think I know the full answer yet. That’s exactly what makes me excited to find out.
We’ll be visiting w**eries, exploring different regions, meeting the people behind the bottles, tasting a lot of w**e, and bringing what we discover back to Dinner Party along the way.
And yes, that means you can expect the Virginia section at Dinner Party to grow—a lot. As we taste and discover producers and bottles we’re excited about, we want to make Dinner Party a place to discover what’s happening in Virginia w**e right now.
Dinner Party Does Virginia starts now. Come rediscover it with us.
Follow along with us on Instagram as we hit the road, visit vineyards, meet the people making the w**es, and share what we find along the way.
This Week's In-Store Tasting: 10.8
This Thursday, we’re pouring all orange w**es: aromatic whites with gorgeous color, a little tannin, and plenty of texture. W**es made for fall—and for the whole meal.
Stop by Thursday, October 8, from 5–7 p.m. for a free tasting, snacks, and a new favorite bottle. (No oranges will be harmed in the making of this tasting.)
