Eat It, Virginia!

A veteran of New York City's fine dining world, the pandemic forced Erin Keene to take a step back and reset her life. That reset landed the Pennsylvania native in Richmond, Virginia, where she opened Second Bottle Wine Shop in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood. "I was in a place where I was ready for a big jump. Life as I knew it had really just shut off [in New York City]. In that time, I started formulating the plans for this wine shop," Keene said. "While I was on the journey to find where the best place or where the best fit would be for it, I had a camping trip planned down here to visit a good friend of mine. We're sitting around the campfire and she's like, 'What about Richmond?' It was like huge fireworks. I had never thought about it as a place that I wanted to live. But all of a sudden, I was like, it makes so much sense in so many ways." Keene made the move to Richmond in 2020 and opened Second Bottle on N. 27th Street in Church Hill in 2021. "I was very struck by Church Hill," Keene said about