Ridge to Root: Honoring the Shared Legacies of Edna Lewis and Barboursville Vineyards
The Edna Lewis Foundation, in partnership with Barboursville Vineyards and Oenoverse, invites you to a special night where two legacies converge at the table.
In 1976, Edna Lewis’s seminal book, The Taste of Country Cooking, proclaimed the food of the American South one of the world’s great cuisines and celebrated the joys of local, seasonal cooking, decades before “farm to table” became common parlance. That same year, Barboursville Vineyards began proving that Virginia soil could speak through wine with the same specificity and integrity. Their fifty-year pursuit of terroir has helped define what Virginia wine is today.
Lewis gave voice to place through food. Barboursville has given voice to place through wine, and on Thursday, November 5th, we celebrate how each has left a legacy that extends beyond Virginia into the broader story of American food and wine culture.
Ridge to Root brings together Barboursville Vineyards and the Edna Lewis Foundation for an evening tracing Virginia's landscape from the Blue Ridge to the soil beneath it. Guests will gather at Barboursville Vineyards for an evening pairing storytelling with wine tastings and a family-style dinner in honor of two legacies rooted in the same place.
This dinner kicks off Oenoverse’s Two Up, Wine Down Wine Festival and benefits the Edna Lewis Foundation’s programming and scholarships that support the next generation of Black foodway stewards in culinary arts, agriculture, food studies, and storytelling.
Using The Taste of Country Cooking as their guide, Chef Leah Branch will present family-style fare drawing on ties to Miss Lewis's documented food traditions, with storytelling from the evening’s emcee, Deb Freeman.
Space is limited to 65 guests.
Tickets
The event ticket price is $100, with optional add-ons.
Ticket prices/packages benefit the Edna Lewis Foundation’s programming and scholarships that support the next generation of Black foodways stewards in culinary arts, agriculture, food studies, and storytelling.
More About the Book
With the publication of The Taste of Country Cooking in 1976, Edna Lewis proclaimed the food of the American South one of the world’s great cuisines. From the field greens and salads of spring; pan-fried chicken and crushed peaches in summer; preserves and sweet potatoes for fall; and hearty soups and stews during the cold winter months, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) extolled the virtues of the good food of her childhood, spent in a Virginia farming community founded by her grandfather and his friends after Emancipation.
More About the Panelists
Conversation on legacy, innovation, and Virginia as a destination for culinary heritage across generations.
More About the Chef
A 2026 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic, Chef Leah Branch demonstrates her passion for Southern cuisine and commitment to regional foodways at The Roosevelt in Richmond, VA.
More About the Partners
Founded in 1976 by Italy’s Zonin family, Barboursville Vineyards helped usher Virginia wine into the modern era, pioneering the cultivation of Vitis vinifera with the conviction that Virginia could produce wines capable of competing on the global stage. Fifty years later, the estate farms 170 acres of vineyards in the Virginia Piedmont, where Italian heritage meets Virginia terroir through wines such as Vermentino, Nebbiolo, Fiano and Barbera, alongside Cabernet Franc, Viognier and the flagship Octagon.
Oenoverse is an access and opportunity initiative, dedicated to expanding opportunity in and through the Virginia wine industry. The goal of Oenoverse is to significantly contribute to building a more inclusive Virginia wine industry through focused outreach efforts that educate and include people from historically excluded and underrepresented communities.
The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group is a leader in commercial and literary publishing and home to some of the most iconic authors in the world, including Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and Prize-winner Yaa Gyasi. Their imprint, Knopf Cooks, publishes voice-driven, upmarket yet accessible cookbooks that lend a distinct perspective to a cuisine or culture.