-I'm in a destination where an ancient landscape forged a distinct culture that continually fascinates.
It's where mountain mythology combines with an urban-sized appetite for renewal and change, and this renewal can be found in the food, the arts, and history.
It's a place where the contributions of its people have made it a vanguard of the creative spirit.
I'm in Asheville, North Carolina.
[ Upbeat tune plays ] I'm Samantha Brown and I've traveled all over this world.
And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.
That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.
Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.
The calming sounds of nature.
On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide open beaches and hundreds of islands.
Sometimes doing nothing can mean everything.
♪ Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.
♪ -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.
That's why we climb... ♪ ...pedal... ♪ ...and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal to ensure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.
You can find out more at amawaterways.com.
♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, experienced on a journey by rail.
Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."
-The world is full of breathtaking destinations and experiences.
AAA wants to help turn vacation dreams into reality.
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♪ -This is one of those views that just fills your soul.
It's just you feel the sun on your face and you look out over this amazing expanse of wilderness that just -- it just absorbs you.
I'll be spending most of my time in Asheville, but first, I wanted to head just outside of it, taking a leisurely drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The road is beckoning.
Let's get back in the car.
♪ While the Blue Ridge Parkway connects two national parks and is itself a national scenic byway, I'm on it to check out one of its many gems, The Folk Art Center.
The Folk Art Center features the oldest craft shop in the United States, as well as the work in craftsmanship of the Southern Highland Craft Guild.
Sam Johnson can often be found here, and his specialty is the creation of bamboo fishing rods, continuing a technique developed over 150 years ago.
-How many craftspeople do this?
-Well, there aren't a lot of people that do it the way I do it, because I make everything on the rod.
When a rod goes out from my shop, I want to know that everything on there is as good as it could possibly be, and I can't do that if I'm buying from someone else.
-So, Sam, why do you have sewing thread?
Is that, like, traditional sewing thread behind you?
-It is very traditional.
We don't sew with it.
We wrap with it.
All of the decoration on the rod and all of the stations on the rod are held on with silk thread, and that's where a lot of the time is invested in a bamboo rod.
-May I see that?
-Certainly.
-That is amazing.
I had no idea.
And so you're literally hand-wrapping the silk thread.
-You're spinning it.
-Oh, you're spinning it.
-You're spinning it on there.
We measure it by number of turns.
And then the spacing is just by eye.
-So here, I thought the bamboo and putting that together was the real craft, but this also is pretty serious.
-The planing and the splitting and doing all the bamboo work to get a blank ready to do that, that, to me, that's the easy part.
This is the real artisan part here.
This is what people want.
-Sam spends a minimum of 50 hours hand-making each one.
-And it'll be exactly the way it was made 100 years ago.
-Nice threads.
-[ Laughing ] Nice threads.
Metaphorically speaking.
-[ Laughing ] Yes.
Asheville is an inspiring place.
You can tell from its people and its food.
-You take a bite and tell me what you think.
-Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.
-Thanks.
-Chef Meherwan Irani is a force for both.
-And just try a little bit of the sauce.
Go straight from the bowl.
It's Indian street food.
I know.
The spices are crazy, right?
-Ohh!
A five-time James Beard Award nominee, he is the owner of five restaurants in Southern states, but the restaurant that began it all is here in Asheville.
Your whole restaurant is dedicated to Indian street food.
-Correct.
This was a passion of mine for 20 years in America of why nobody was doing Indian street food.
We have plenty of buffets and curries.
-True.
Yeah, you're right.
-And you can find a curry house everywhere.
-Mm-hmm.
-What I love about this food is that it's a mixture of the familiar... -Yeah.
-...and the unfamiliar.
-Right, right.
-And I think it makes it exciting and fun.
And the familiar part makes it approachable.
-So, familiar -- I see okra right here.
-Okra.
-That's a Southern staple.
-Here's where spice plays a huge role.
I mean, okra is okra, right?
And fried okra is fried okra.
So what makes this taste Indian?
It's the spice mixture.
It's the spice... -Right.
I think as famous as Indian dishes are -- You know, chicken tikka, right?
Masala.
The spice.
I feel like in no other cuisine the spice is as integral to the meal as the food itself.
-I agree.
-I think that's where, like, sometimes Indian food gets people.
They're intimidated.
They think it's too spicy.
"This is gonna be overpowering."
What would you like them to know?
-That's the mistake that I think is made in describing Indian food.
People equate spicy with heat, you know, like, on the palate.
And most of what you're gonna eat here is spiced with flavor, but not necessarily with a lot of heat.
So cumin, cardamom, ginger.
You know, clove, nutmeg, black pepper.
-Meherwan now sources, selects, and blends for his small-batch spice company right here in Asheville.
Now he can reach more people with his big flavors than just who comes into his restaurant.
And, so, what was your experience coming to the South, the American South?
-I just had a feeling that if we took flavors that were delicious... -Mm-hmm.
-...made them approachable without dumbing them down, backed off on "the spice" that Americans think of...
So it was trying to bring both cultures together that I think made people go like, "This is amazing."
♪ -I'm driving up to the legendary Biltmore House, but I won't be visiting the magnificent home per se.
I'm actually here to geek out on Frederick Law Olmsted, considered to be the father of American landscape architecture.
I'm actually driving through one of his designs now.
-Think about it.
In the 1890s, it took almost an hour to get from the railroad station up to the house.
No long-range views, that there would be little incidences that guests of George Vanderbilt would be able to see where water spills over a little waterfall, a bank of rhododendrons and different flowers.
You don't see the house until you come around that corner, and all of a sudden, there it is in all its glory.
That was the culmination of the arrival experience.
I'm Parker Andes, and I'm the director of horticulture here on the Biltmore Estate.
-It's great, and here we are.
-And here we are.
And it's interesting.
We're literally walking in the opposite direction of everyone, right?
We're going away from the house.
How important was the landscape to the house?
Was the house here first and then the landscape?
That's usually how it goes.
-Exactly the opposite.
George Vanderbilt had purchased this property.
He loved the view of the mountains.
And he wrote a letter to Olmsted asking Olmsted to come in and help him and ask, "Tell me if I've made a mistake."
So Olmsted helped lay out the grounds, the roads, talked about the forestry and how important that was going to be.
All of that before the house ever started coming up out of the ground.
-So, is this one of the paths that Olmsted would have traced way back when?
-Absolutely.
In fact, we don't move any of the historic paths.
We might widen them for today's guests.
But this path was on a drawing in 1893 and then was walked on -- Olmsted, Vanderbilt, all those guys -- by 1895.
Olmsted designed this garden to have garden rooms.
So the whole garden is separated by things like this or stairs where you have an experience in one area, you go through a hallway, a doorway, a set of steps, a hedge, and you have a different garden.
This is the Spring Garden, a completely -- not completely, but a very different experience.
-Yeah, you can actually feel it get a little more moist.
You feel lower into the -- -A lot more evergreen.
Much more evergreen.
Much more closed in on the paths.
And that's our job, is to keep that feel, that design going for the next hundred years.
-This is the Walled Garden, which has to be one of the most popular spots in the entire estate.
-It is.
It really attracts.
Color attracts people's eye.
And the more saturated the color, the better they like it.
It wasn't, as it turned out, one of Olmsted's favorites.
He said at one point that one of the first things people did to ruin one of his parks is they would put in a flower garden.
-[ Laughs ] He did not like flowers.
-He liked flowers, but he liked that natural, more... -This is way too manicured.
-Right.
Rows.
Straight rows.
Why would somebody want to do that?
It was called bedding out, and that style was not something that he was at all interested in.
-But the original plans of the estate show that George Vanderbilt wanted it -- and he wrote the checks.
-As the director of horticulture, my responsibilities are to not screw it up.
So our job is to maintain those design intents from Frederick Law Olmsted and George Vanderbilt when they originally laid out this property.
So we hope that our guests get that, and we know some of them really do.
"Oh, look.
This is why we came."
That's -- That's when we know that design intent that Olmsted put out 125-plus years ago still works today.
So it's really special.
-You know, most people don't know that these were actually, like, not only the oldest mountains in the world, but they were the biggest mountains that have ever been on this planet.
They are just that old and eroded down to what you see outside right now.
And so that billions of years of water trickling down rocks and percolating through soil and evolution has created this landscape.
The soul is old, and it's something you just learn to, like, love and feel.
-And all of that, you are, in a sense, bottling.
-That is exactly what we're trying to, like, distill down into the weird stuff that we make and we're really proud of.
-Eda Rhyne is a distillery in a beer town, and what makes it especially unique is how they use locally foraged greenery to infuse their spirits.
-So, this is spicebush.
Grows all over the East Coast all the way to Ohio.
Today we'll be bottling the Lindera Vodka that we make from this, which is an herbal infused vodka with just these spring leaves.
Harvested in the morning.
They have to be in the still by that afternoon in order to make it work.
-So you harvest this in the morning, and it has to go in fresh today.
-Today.
Yes.
-Okay.
Alright.
So we have a lot of work to do.
-We do.
We do.
-Okay.
-You're gonna be using the twig to put in each bottle that we bottle here.
-And all of these plants are not only local, but, like, incredibly local.
Like, just maybe 10 miles away.
-Less than a mile and then a couple of miles.
You know, I'll let Chris sort of tell you a lot more about this because he comes from more of a foraging and family history of making medicine out of these plants than I do.
-You know, a lot of people when they think, you know, Western North Carolina spirits, they sort of get this idea of the hillbilly in the woods making illicit liquor.
-Mm-hmm.
-And that's definitely part of our history.
You know?
-[ Laughs ] -But what a lot of people don't understand is that, you know, there were portions of each run of the moonshine, you know, that actually went to the medicine makers in the community because there weren't any hospitals.
You know, we just want to pay homage to not only the people and the place, but the plants.
-And one of the ways you really celebrate all of those things is to put it into a very specific herbal liqueur that the Italians sort of made famous, I would guess, and their joy of life, right?
-Absolutely.
-Amari.
-Definitely.
-You produce three amari?
-Right now we have three different amari that we produce.
We have an Amaro Flora.
This is made of very complex floral flavors.
It's made of some roots, but a lot of wildflowers.
-That's lovely.
-Right.
-And just to know that these are wild flowers that you picked.
I mean, that's -- It's literally a bouquet.
-So, if you just stick that down in there and just snip that off right there... -Okay.
You're gonna raise it a little?
-Don't -- Yeah.
-I'm not gonna get your fingers.
-Don't get my fingers, now.
-It's okay.
It's alright.
[ Laughter ] And so this just imparts a flavor, a nice warming spice, and that warming spice is going to actually grow a little bit more, evolve, open up.
-Totally.
So, in the ones where there's a slightly larger stick, there's gonna be a noticeable flavor difference between this one three months from now.
-Okay.
-Well, I'm very interested to see what you think about it.
-Wow.
-And how does it feel in your mouth?
-Still has that lemony taste from the leaf.
I tasted the leaves.
-Right.
-And then I chewed on the stick.
-Yeah.
-And it's all still in the glass.
-Right.
We're really trying to capture a sense of place here, you know, a regional flavor, and using the things that are specific to here to find an expression that represents us.
-I'm Alexandria Monque Ravenel, and I am a social entrepreneur.
Along with my child, Ajax Ravenel, and a few other friends, we opened Noir Collective.
We decided right in the middle of a pandemic that we needed to do something to help Black entrepreneurs, and so together we opened this space, and we have about 13 different entrepreneurs of color that are represented here.
They're artists.
They're craftspeople.
They're imaginaries and visionaries.
They're health workers.
We created a space where we can thrive together.
-Is being here at the Noir Collective -- Is this the first time so many of your paintings have been hung right next to each other?
-Yes, it has been.
It just feels like my journey has actually been good.
What I went through, my troubles, the rough times, it all paid off.
-It did.
-It's paying off still.
-And were you able to -- You were talking about the struggles and having a hard time.
You were able to get through a lot of that hard time, or work through that, through art.
-Yes.
It's been 47 years since the last time I saw my mother.
And so having the parents to get arrested and going to prison, I had to go live with my dad's parents.
My grandmother was a very powerful influence, raising 14 kids of her own and taking in 4 more, which was us at the time.
My art teachers going through school.
Just having these powerful women in my life.
So my focus is all about women.
The eyes, the lips, the hair.
Always trying to figure out what my mom looks like if I would see her today.
-Is that right?
Is she in almost every painting that you paint?
-Pretty much.
-Wow.
-I had someone tell me before.
It's like, "You got to quit drawing yourself."
But then I realized it's me trying to find out what my mother looks like.
-Wow.
And when people walk through the door here and see your paintings, what is one of the things you really want them to take away from your paintings?
-The story.
It -- I was always -- I always tell people that my paintings are gonna reach those it's intended for.
Sometimes you can walk up to a piece, and you know the stories and that's what I got to have.
So each one of them has a story.
It just has to resonate with the right person.
-Resonating strongly with the community -- and travelers to it -- is DeWayne Barton and his Hood Hugger tours.
-To me, a Hood Hugger is somebody who heals himself while also rebuilding their community.
-So it's kind of like a tree hugger?
You know?
You hug the trees.
-Exactly.
And that's where we got, like, the Hood Hugger from.
We looked at the tree huggers, and they was like -- They had chained themselves to a tree, live in a tree to try to protect it.
We feel the same way about the hoods.
-Hood Hugger tours tell the story of the past, present, and future of African-Americans in Asheville.
-Right now we're in The Block, and this was a central African-American business district.
This was our Black Wall Street.
Over 65 Black-owned businesses in and around this area.
And the YMI was, like, the anchor of this area.
Young Men's Institute.
And it was like a community center for the African-American tradesmen that helped build the Biltmore Estate.
18,000 square feet.
It was really a multi-purpose building that was designed for recreation and entrepreneurship activities.
They even had an orchestra.
The YMI Orchestra.
-What is it now?
-Right now it's still a community center.
During the time of integration, the building was condemned and scheduled to being torn down, and then the community came together, and they was able to put it on the National Historical Register around 1977.
And right now it's one of the oldest African-American culture centers in the country.
-When you see all this development around a small little patch of greenery, you know that a lot went into saving this piece of land.
-Well, this park was created because the wave of development by this group, Just Folks They seen the development coming, and they just wanted to say, like, you know, Black folks were here, and they created this mural.
And what it is is a timeline mural starting on this far left, and it goes through time and is focusing on an individual or place.
There was over 100 volunteers that helped make this happen.
-So right here is the -- Is that the street where we're walking down?
-Yes.
Yeah.
That's The Block.
And remember I told you over 65 Black-owned businesses was in and around this area.
-And then it -- And then it disappeared.
-Yeah, it disappeared with bulldozers.
-Mm.
-They tore it down.
And this is when I talk about that period of urban renewal.
We feel urban renewal really tripped up the Civil Rights Movement and didn't give it the foundation and strength it needed to really put us in a different direction.
-But as you say, now the momentum is slowly changing and things are starting to go in a different direction to bring this back to more of that -- of that community that made it thrive.
-Our city is slowly coming on board to acknowledging African-American history and culture.
In fact, there's over 25 different projects right now trying to honor and acknowledge that history.
-Okay.
Tape's rolling.
-♪ I wanna go downtown ♪ ♪ And look some stranger in the face ♪ ♪ I wanna be myself again ♪ ♪ Remember why I love this place ♪ ♪ I wanna wake up now ♪ ♪ And squeeze the livin' from this day ♪ ♪ I wanna believe truly ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be okay, but I'm... ♪ -What's it like to record music in this room with its history?
-It's an unbelievable honor, and it was from this very room that bluegrass music was first introduced to North America over the airwaves.
So thousands of acts have played in this very room.
And there are many wonderful ghosts that visit here very frequently.
And it's such a privilege to be able to work out of this space and to try to carry that tradition forward.
-♪ ...myself away ♪ -Citizen Vinyl isn't simply a recording studio.
Its ground floor is a community space where food is served, records are sold and even made.
You and I were brought up on vinyl records.
-Absolutely.
-There was nothing like just holding that record in my hand.
It all comes back.
There's such a sense memory to it, right?
Taking it out, hearing it, leave the cardboard, putting it on -- -The smell.
-The smell!
-Yes.
-Reading the liner notes.
-Yes.
-And it's something that people now -- the younger generation.
Oh, now we get to say that.
-Yes.
I know.
"The kids."
-"The kids."
-"The kids these days."
-The kids these days, they didn't unders-- They don't have that at all.
But it is coming back, and you are proof of that.
-Yes.
When we decided to call our business Citizen Vinyl, we wanted to do it for a couple of reasons.
One is to recognize the history of this building.
This is the newspaper building, the Asheville Citizen-Times.
So we wanted to recognize the -- the history of this building, but we also were really intrigued with the whole notion of, what does it mean to be a citizen in today's age?
What does it mean to belong to a place?
We felt like it was -- it was a way for us to challenge ourselves to be good citizens and, hopefully, in doing so, to lead by example and try to inspire and encourage all of Asheville to step up to be the good citizens that we're all capable of being.
♪ -A traveler coming to the area around Asheville, you're gonna have a little bit of a lot of everything.
For me, it's beer, great beer, but it's also fly fishing.
I enjoy trout fishing in these mountains.
-You know, that's part of it.
There's also an abundance of really great people here, people who have been able to flourish, who do weird stuff, and people who wouldn't necessarily, like, be as easily accepted in certain places of the country or the world.
-I'm happy to be part of the history and the legacy of those who came before us, who have toiled and labored and lost.
And so it's really important to seek them out and see another part of Asheville.
-To seek the weird, the wonderful, and the not known is why I share my love of travel.
And that's why Asheville, North Carolina, is a Place to Love.
♪ For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.
Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.
The calming sounds of nature.
On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide open beaches and hundreds of islands.
Sometimes doing nothing can mean everything.
♪ Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.
♪ ♪ -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.
That's why we climb... ♪ ...pedal... ♪ ...and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal to ensure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.
You can find out more at amawaterways.com.
♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, experienced on a journey by rail.
Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."
-The world is full of breathtaking destinations and experiences.
AAA wants to help turn vacation dreams into reality.
Wherever you want to go, AAA has services to help you before, during, and after your trip.
Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
