>>Hi, I'm Tassie Pippert, here today at Delaplane cellars, where the wines are amazing and the hospitality is impeccable.

So go grab your glass, it's time to Un-Wine'd.

>>Production funding for Un-Wine'd was made possible in part by- >>The Virginia Wine Board, promoting the interests of vineyards and wineries and the Commonwealth through research, education and marketing.

There's a movement growing in Virginia's vineyards, discover more at virginiawine.org.

>>And by.

(slow music) (upbeat music) >>I had an amazing time today with Angelo Tanner here at Delaplane Cellars.

We had the chance to talk a little bit about the history of Delaplane.

This place used to be called Piedmont Station.

We also talked a lot about hospitality and how important that is in the wine industry.

Back in my kitchen, I am going to pair up some delicious foods, some tortellini soup with a little bit of sausage.

Some lovely spicy shrimp with vermicelli and some delicious chicken salad.

No mayo here, a lovely avocado, dill and lemon vinegarette.

So let's head to the kitchen and make some recipes but first grab your glass, it's really time now to Un-Wine'd.

(upbeat jazz music) I love a great chicken salad and this is so good with a sparkling crisp, wonderful Sauvignon Blanc.

The first thing we're gonna do is chop up a few ingredients.

So I have some fresh chives here.

You can use fresh green onions if you like, but I really like chives in this.

I think the flavor distribution of chives is a little bit easier on the pallet than the onion.

You get that chunk of onion, but with chives, it's all the way through it.

So I'm gonna take a nice bowl here, and I have my chives.

And I also have a few other things that I'm gonna put in here that I've already chopped, including 10 to 12 slices of bacon that I crisped, and then just chopped up.

I have one, 10 ounce package of corn, and I love to use this variegated color because it really adds a lot to the recipe.

So just one, 10 ounce package of frozen corn, or you can use about two cobs of fresh corn cooked or uncooked.

And then I have four chicken breasts that I've grilled.

And I love it when it's grilled, I also love to do this salad with a rotisserie chicken.

It's just wonderful.

So anytime you have leftover roasted chicken, it's just delicious.

Now the last thing I wanna put in here are some avocados.

Now let's look at these avocados.

When you buy an avocado, you want it to have just a hint of give to it.

You don't want your fingers to smoosh in.

And then if you've got this little stem on the end, just pull that off and you can see then if it's green or if it's brown.

If it's brown, likely you're avocado will be brown as well.

So let's just run a knife right around the edge.

It's a nice, tough skin on that one.

And we're just going to remove the meat from two avocados and then chop those up.

So I've got all of my great ingredients here in my bowl and I'm just gonna toss this around a little bit.

I like to toss it before I put the dressing on so the dressing when it lands, doesn't just absorb in one thing.

And now we're gonna make some delicious dressing.

Now what I like with this dressing is that it's great on salad, it's great on this chicken salad.

So I always make a little bit extra, because sometimes I like to make this in a sandwich and sometimes I like to make it in a salad.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is cut my lemons in half and juice those really well.

For this recipe, it takes it's about two lemons, but for today because I wanna serve this as a salad, I'm gonna use three lemons.

So just nicely softened so you can juice them right up.

Remember with lemons, just like with limes, if they're too hard, stick those things in the microwave.

So what I'm gonna do now is just pour this into a little dish, so that I can make my dressing.

You want equal parts juice and olive oil.

So if you're using two lemons, that's about four to five tablespoons of juice if they're nice juicy lemons.

So four to five tablespoons of olive oil.

So we're going to take our juice, pour in some olive oil, equal parts ish.

Then I wanna take a little salt.

About a teaspoon.

It's three pinches for me and a little pepper.

And the flavor is actually going to come from the dill that I put in it, and I love a good fresh dill in this.

This dressing is also really great with fresh basil or fresh thyme.

So I have some really nice fresh dill here from the garden.

And you can use dry dill.

I like to use about a tablespoon of fresh dill, but if you only dried dill, about a teaspoon.

So you don't wanna overpower.

And remember, any time you use dried ingredients, dried herbs, when it says fresh, you're gonna use about one third the amount.

And then give that a good whisk.

You just want to get that lemon juice and olive oil incorporated.

Nice.

Now I wanna put about, oh, quarter to a half cup on here, and then I'm gonna save the rest to put on my salads as I make them.

Wow, delicious.

There we go.

Now, the wonderful thing about this, you can take this to a picnic.

You can use it as or hors d'Oeuvres on crostini.

Just make sure that you chop up all your ingredients really finely.

Now I wanna take some chicken salad and just put on some salad greens.

And you can see here that I have a couple of slices of red bell pepper.

If I'm doing this in a sandwich, I like to add the red bell pepper to give it that little pop from being in the bread.

So you want that little bit of red, or of course you can always slice tomato.

But if I'm doing it as a salad, I like to just kind of make that a little topper.

Now let's give it a taste.

Love this.

Oh, this is so good.

Now let's talk about our wine.

This is a crisp Sauvignon Blanc.

A Sauvignon Blanc is a white grape.

You can see that right here in the glass.

It's grown in moderate and cool climates as well as warm climates.

Here in Virginia we have more of a moderate climate.

So when you taste this, you're probably gonna taste a lot of citrus, a little grapefruit, a little bit of lemon.

It's just wonderful, and it's fantastic with dill.

So I always use Sauvignon Blanc with dill when I'm gonna serve these together.

If I'm gonna do basil, the salad is wonderful with a Chardonnay.

So this one in particular is crisp, it's wonderful.

If it were grown in a warmer climate, it may have a little more flavor of a peach or an apricot.

Because that warm climate just gives a little different flavor.

So let's see how it is with the chicken salad.

Oh, perfect.

Great summer meal, wonderful, again for holidays.

So I hope you'll enjoy this delicious avocado chicken salad with dill dressing and some great Sauvignon Blanc.

Well I know, I love your wines and we're sipping one of your Bordeaux blends.

So tell me a little bit about that.

>>Correct, yeah.

So what we primarily do is Bordeaux blends.

What you're sipping on right now is our 2017 Piedmont Station.

>>Oh, it's so good, it is so good.

>>Piedmont station is one of our flagship wines.

This particular vintage, I believe is about 50% Cab Sauv, 20% Merlot, 20% Cab Franc and then the rest P.V.

>>Okay, so a little Petit Verdot in there, and I can really pull that.

>>Yeah.

>>I love it.

>>That's something what I've learned in the past two years that I've been here working with Rick Tagg, our winemaker and the rest of our staff is.

Before, I drank wine, I appreciated it.

But didn't know really the process, how to get from the grape to the bottle.

So what we've learned, what I've really learned is it's a complex thing.

There's a lot of ins, and a lot of outs as our wine maker will always tell me.

>>Absolutely.

>>And it's a recipe, they're building blocks.

We use a certain varietal for a building block for a certain wine, and then we use the other varietals to enhance that.

>>Exactly.

>>So it's so cool to kind of go through that blending process.

>>It's great, Now Piedmont Station is what Delaplane was called earlier, right?

>>Correct, yes.

So the town of Delaplane, which is a few miles from us used to be called Piedmont Station.

And I don't know the exact history but I know it was the first railroad stop in the Civil war.

(upbeat jazz music) >>Well, this is just such a beautiful area.

And you're surrounded by these rolling hills and mountains, and just looking out at the vineyard.

It's so incredibly beautiful.

You have of gorgeous scenes from right here at your vineyard.

>>Yes, we are very proud of the vineyard, the views that we have.

If you're here, we talk about our logo.

And if you look at our view across the way, you see the Cobbler Mountains, you see our logo.

You're overlooking the crooked one run valley.

We've got Lost Mountain here, it's just unbelievable.

There's not a day that I'm here that I'm like, oh, there's a bad view.

Sunsets are amazing.

Just, even when it's cloudy and overcast, you just get this beautiful view over the valley.

Over the past year what we've really seen is a lot of new customers, a lot of new people to wine, especially during COVID.

They've had to get outside of their house, get outside the city.

And fortunately, us being in the country, we have a lot of outdoor seating.

We've seen a lot of new people to wine and it can be intimidating.

>>Yes.

>>And so we wanna make sure they feel comfortable, and that's the one thing that we do when they first walk in.

They make sure we're greeted with a friendly face, find them a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the wine.

That's what it should be about.

>>Angelo, thank you so much.

>>Cheers.

>>For having us here and for letting us enjoy these amazing wine.

>>Thank you very much.

>>Thank you.

(upbeat music) I have a wonderful Petit Manseng for you today.

Petit Manseng is just a delicious wine that can be dry, off dry, even sweet.

For this recipe because it has wonderful Asian influences, it works really well with a slightly off dry Petit Manseng.

So the first thing we're gonna do is take some rice vermicelli.

This is a Thai shrimp with rice vermicelli, and it's just so delicious.

So let's pour some hot boiling chicken stock over that vermicelli, I just want to cover it so it has a chance to soften.

It's not cooking over the heat but it definitely cooks from the heat.

And that's probably good right there.

Now, I just want to make sure all of those noodles are under stock, kind of underwater.

And they'll soften up perfectly by the time I'm ready to put this dish together.

Now I'm heating up a pan, just over medium high heat.

And I want to add to that about two tablespoons of olive oil.

And then I'm gonna put in just a little bit of sesame oil, because I love that nutty flavor that it provides to this dish.

And we're gonna use sesame oil, not once but twice in this dish.

And then let's add some shrimp.

Now these are not small, not medium, kind of in between.

They're about 31 to 40, count per pound.

Now, I just wanna get those started on the heat.

And while I'm doing that, I'm going to chop up two Thai chili peppers.

Now these are extremely hot, but oh, my goodness they are so delicious.

And just a nice thin slice works really well for this.

If you don't like them terribly spicy, what you can do is use four chili peppers and just about one inch of the end of each.

Give these a little stir.

You just want to cook these shrimp through.

Remember shrimp should never be so hard from cooking that they have no give to them anymore.

You want to make sure that you just get these shrimp the perfect pink all the way through so there's no gray.

So this rice vermicelli dish is so easy to make with tofu, with chicken, with shrimp.

You can even make it without any protein at all, but I suggest the protein because it really needs that body of protein.

But I've certainly tried it both ways.

Now I have a tiny cucumber here.

I love these mini cucumbers, they have a lot of flavor.

And what I wanna do is just cut some strips because I'm going to Julienne these cucumbers.

Now, anytime you Julienne, you want a nice thin strip.

So you get texture but you don't want a lot of bite with these cucumbers.

If you were doing a Julienne with carrot, you'd have a lot more texture.

With cucumbers, I just kind of like to have them small, like this.

I'm going to cut those in thirds.

Now, let's just turn these over and give them another cut.

I have my cucumber all set.

And now I'm going to use some Thai basil and some fresh cilantro.

Now, fresh cilantro, you wanna make sure that you wash it really well, because it hold holds a lot of sand.

Generally, cilantro likes a sandy well draining soil.

And I'm just gonna chop up, oh, about a quarter to a half cup.

And it doesn't need to be finally chopped.

You really want some texture with this.

And then this is Thai basil, and I love Thai basil because it has great flavor to it.

A little bit of a licorice, a little spice.

So I'm gonna cut up maybe about two tablespoons of Thai basil leaves.

Now it looks like my shrimp are just about ready, and my peppers have cooked through.

So as soon as those are nice and hot, I'm just gonna move those to the other side here of my counter, and we're going to assemble an amazing dish.

So let's start this assembly.

This is such a wonderful dish that you can serve hot.

When the noodles just come out and the shrimp are hot.

You can serve it cold.

You can also serve this at room temperature, which is actually the way that I like it best.

And we're gonna take some of our rice vermicelli and put right over on our plate.

Now let's toss those salted and peppered shrimp.

Make sure you get the seasoning all through.

And I actually don't put the salt and pepper on while I'm cooking it all the time, sometimes I like to put it on after because the salt tends to bring out all the moisture.

And if you've got small shrimp, a lot of times the moisture comes out and then the shrimp get a little bit too hard.

So we want to start with a quarter of our shrimp.

This is a pound, so about a quarter pound of shrimp, about four ounces.

Kind of coming out on one side and I like to do display.

So, enjoy however you like.

Now I wanna take some carrot.

I've, shredded one very large carrot for this recipe.

One large or four small.

And you can do this as a big family style platter.

Of course you can also do it as individual plates.

And then I like to take a little green onion that have sliced very thinly on the bias.

Some peanuts, because who doesn't need that crunch.

And I'll always put those right in the center.

Right, like that.

Add a little bit of our cilantro.

A little of our Thai basil.

And some of our wonderful cucumber.

Now I have in my bowl about a quarter cup of soy sauce.

And to that, I'm gonna add a little bit of peanut butter.

Now, I like to use a crunchy peanut butter for this but you can also use smooth, I just like the texture.

And we're gonna stir that through first because peanut butter just has a way of chunking.

And I've got that kind of mixed in a little bit.

Now I'm going to add to that a little bit of rice wine vinegar.

And then a bit of sesame oil and some honey.

Now, if you're working with honey and you wanna put it in a little bowl for mise en place, and you have trouble getting out, spray a little non-stick spray in your dish and it will come right out for you.

Then I have a little bit of brown sugar, and a little chili paste that has a little bit of garlic in it.

Mm.

So we have everything together, one last stir with a spoon and let's just drizzle this all over the top.

Okay, so let's taste this Petit Manseng.

This is so wonderful.

And again, you get Petit Mansengs a lot of different ways.

It's a thick-skinned grape, it likes a warm growing region.

So it has a little longer to hang on the vine and it's just wonderful.

Hmm, oh, so good.

Just enough sweet to go with this, let's give it a taste.

I'm gonna try a little shrimp right here.

Mm, the flavor of those Thai spices, that spiciness of the chili, the Thai influence with the peanuts, oh, it's perfect with this wine.

(upbeat music) I have a wonderful sausage and tortellini soup that we're going to serve with a lovely Tannat.

Now Tannat is a really tannic, heavy, beautiful wine and it needs something creamy and delicious, to break up that tannin.

The fats in this dish will go perfectly with a Tannat, and I can't wait for you to try it.

So in my pan I have one pound of Italian sausage and we're just going to saute that for a little bit until it's almost done.

Now, while my sausage is cooking, I just wanna tell you some other things that we're going to add to the soup.

I have some really nice thinly sliced carrots here.

Just one carrot, super thinly sliced, sort of on the bias which gives it the opportunity to cook through a little bit better than just flat.

I also have one baby zucchini, not a huge one.

I like to use these little, nice, tight tiny ones, so we don't have a lot of seeds floating around in the soup, but instead we have a lot of great vegetable.

I've got a couple cloves with garlic and then one small onion that I've chopped up.

We're also gonna use some spinach and I have about three and a half cups or so, of packed spinach.

You wanna pack that really tightly.

Now, if you're purchasing it by the ounce, one of those little five ounce containers of baby spinach is just perfect.

And then a nine ounce package of a pre-made fresh tortellini.

And I use either a tortellini with cheese and spinach, or one that's just cheese.

Now, when you make this soup, you wanna make sure that you're using a mild or sweet Italian sausage, not a spicy one.

When you're working with tannic acid that's in red wines, the heat is intensified in the food by that tannin.

And tannin can just really be biting itself.

So if you're adding a lot of spicy heat to it, the tannins can often be overpowering.

And then the food just does not quite meld together with the wine.

Now, my sausage is about half to three quarters of the way cooked through.

At this point, I'm going to add my carrot.

Carrot is going to be the hardest of the vegetable that we're using.

So when you have a nice hard vegetable, you wanna put that in first.

So let's drop in that carrot.

And next let's go with our aromatics.

So we'll use a little bit of our chopped onion.

Again, this is one small chopped onion and it doesn't have to be finely chopped, just a nice medium chop will do.

And now our garlic.

So you can see our sausage is almost completely cooked through, that is perfect.

We're going to cook this until no red still shows through.

So until it's just done.

And right before it's finished cook, let's add our zucchini.

Now, we're not trying to brown the sausage.

What we really want to do is just to get it so that it's not red inside and this looks perfect.

And at this point, we're going to add a little bit of flour.

Now the flower will help thicken it and give it a little extra richness.

And we'll also add some herbs.

I have some dried basil.

Dried oregano.

And a little bit of dried parsley.

I'm not seeing any flour.

So now what I wanna do is add one, six ounce can of tomato paste.

Now this will give a wonderful sweetness to this soup.

It will also give that additional richness and it adds to the flavor profile.

Now, anytime you add thickening, you're going to want to add some sort of stock.

So we have some delicious chicken stock here, about six cups will do it.

And add that slowly so it doesn't bounce back up on you.

And I want to add one cup of heavy whipping cream.

So I've simmered this about five minutes with the cream, just enough to bring that up to a nice boil.

And I'm going to add these tortellinis.

Now, normally tortellini, about two to three minutes, depending on the brand.

I'm going to let these simmer for five.

So look at this beautiful soup, it's absolutely incredible.

I'm going to turn the heat off now because I don't want to boil the spinach.

I just want it to wilt, and I'm going to add the spinach now to this beautiful tortellini soup.

Anytime I have tortellini in my soup, my day is made.

Now, if you really like cheese on this, you can also put on some fresh Parmesan.

But I like it just the way it is and the stock just tastes great.

So let's pour out a little of this Tannat.

Look at that color, rich, beautiful.

It has some flavors of a little black licorice, a perfect pairing.

So good, just enough fat and protein content that it really works with this beautiful Tannat.

So I hope you've enjoyed today's show and these wonderful foods that we've paired with incredible Virginia wines.

So from this chicken salad to this lovely Thai shrimp dish, mm, and this wonderful soup with sausage and tortellini.

I hope you'll enjoy every recipe you find on vpm.org/unwined.

So until next time, I'm Tassie Pippert saying go grab that glass, it's always time to Un-Wine'd.

>>Production funding for Un-Wine'd was made possible in part by- >>The Virginia Wine Board, promoting the interests of vineyards and wineries and the Commonwealth through research, education and marketing.

There's a movement growing in Virginia's vineyards.

Discover more at virginiawine.org.

>>And by.

(upbeat music) (slow music)