Jessie’s Girls

Beautiful setting, best friends, delicious wine, cheese and fig plate, and chickens.  Just another winocation.

To be honest, I could do without the chickens.  But other than that, it was the makings of a perfect wino weekend.  We all convened in Charlottesville, where Jess and Charlie will be getting married in October, to celebrate our future bride-to-be. 

We visited King Vineyard, which is where their reception will take place.  Gorgeous.

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon at two of our favorites from previous visits, Veritas Vineyard and Blue Mountain Brewery, sampling the finest they had to offer!

Veritas’ newest addition, the chickens wandering the yard, was a surprise.  I guess I am a city girl, because I did not know what to make of those chickens getting so close to us!

We wrapped up the day with dinner with Jess’s family at Bang, a tapas restaurant.  I’ve visited Jess probably about eight times since she moved to Charlottesville in 2004, and I can say this for certain about that town: if you are a foodie, you will not be a disappointed.  (Fortunately, we had started the day out with a brisk 4 mile run through the hilly streets of Cville – which I hope help mitigated some of the damage!) 

My favorite event of the weekend was giving Jess her wino wedding gift.  I mentioned in a previous post how Jess is my “matched case” – we have many shared hobbies and passions.  One of those shared passions is documenting every single second of our life with pictures.  I know Jess has been dying for a digital SLR for a few years, and the winos went in together to give her one to capture all the exciting events leading up to her big day.  The look on her face when she opened it – delight, then shock, and then it sorta looked like someone punched her in the stomach, she started crying so hard! – was so priceless.  It made me so happy that we all know each other so well to know how to truly delight and surprise each other!  (Maybe she’ll be inspired to start a blog with all the pics she’ll soon be taking… hmm…)

It was a perfect weekend of time with my girlfriends, with delicious food, spent in one of the most beautiful parts of our country, celebrating the happiness of one of my favorite people.  To say my life is rich is an understatement.