>>Today on Un-Wine'd we're at Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg, Virginia where honey plays the key role in these wines.

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 in the commonwealth through research, education, and marketing.

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

Discover more at virginiawine.org.

>>And by.

(upbeat jazz music) >>I had so much fun with Glenn Lavender as he led us through Silver Hand Meadery and showed us how honey wine is made.

On today's show, we'll taste some of that mead and I'll also pair it up with some delicious food including pork loin with garlic apple honey sauce, blueberry barbecue sauce on steak and homemade vanilla ice cream with toasted pecans and homemade salted caramel.

Pork and honey are such a natural fit.

So what I'm going to do today is a delicious pork loin for you that has a honey and garlic and a little bit of apple in a sauce.

It's wonderful.

So the first thing we wanna do is just trim off that fat cap a little bit.

When you do a pork tenderloin or a pork loin you don't necessarily have to have that fat cap.

You're not slow roasting it and the fat doesn't have to continue to go down through the meat.

So I usually try to trim off a lot of that.

It also allows me to remove the silver skin that's right beneath.

So let's just trim that up.

When you're trimming off this fat cap make sure you have a really nice sharp knife, nice pointy knife so you can get under that cap and just remove it all.

The pork is very slippery and the knife can just slip right out of your hands.

So you wanna be very, very careful.

Now, I've got the silver skin right there and it's coming right out.

The silver skin can be very, very tough.

And so with any long muscle you wanna make sure you trim that off.

Pork loins, beef tenderloin.

It's kind of a thin thing that you see but you don't necessarily think about the fact that it's going to be tough when you bite into it.

And you can see that silver skin right there.

Let's just lift that with the point of our knife and pull it off.

Now, once we have this all trimmed we're going to put some honey on it and then we're also going to put on some herbs, salt and pepper, and great flavor.

So this is a rub that can be made with or without the herbs.

The herb I like to use in this is thyme but today I'm gonna use this actually without thyme because I think it works better with this particular mead.

So I have some smoked paprika about a tablespoon and a half and I want to add to that, one teaspoon of onion powder and one teaspoon of garlic powder.

There we go.

Make sure you get it all out of the bowl.

So I have my salt and pepper mix, half salt, half pepper.

I wanna put in about two teaspoons all together mixed.

There we go.

And I'm just gonna mix that up.

This is a really nice combination.

Now when you put the thyme in it the flavor just changes ever so slightly.

And if you use a lemon thyme, it makes it even different.

Now I like to use hot honey.

If you've never tried hot honey this is really a wonderful product.

It just is a little spicy, but we're not gonna add so much that you really get a lot of spice.

I'm gonna put on about two teaspoons of honey across the top of my pork.

There we go.

And then I want to just rub it.

Now, if you don't have hot honey, that's okay.

Just use honey.

You can even use maple syrup for this.

Just give that nice top a little rub.

And then let's top it off with our beautiful rub mixture.

Mmm.

It's gonna be so delicious.

Now what I wanna do is pop this into a pan and I'm going to bake it at 350 degrees for an hour and 10 minutes, or until the pork is right at 155.

I want to remove it when it's not quite to 165, because remember, you'll have residual cooking after you take it out of the oven.

And with pork, it's okay to serve it slightly below 165.

So let's pop that in the oven and then I'll be back to show you some great sauce.

So let's make this delicious sauce.

It has honey, garlic, and apple in.

It really goes well with this pork.

So we're gonna start with half cup of butter in our pan.

Let's just turn that heat on so it gets a chance to start to melt.

Now while that's melting, I'm going to grate some apple, about half of an apple.

And I like to use something tart for this because I'm using honey and I don't want so much sugar in this.

Mead and apples pork honey, they just go together so well.

And all of these flavors just really enhance the mead.

There we go.

I think we've got enough.

So while this is melting now I just wanna take some garlic, six cloves, deliciousness.

Let's just put that in that butter as it's melting.

And I also at the same time want to add my apple.

This allows the apple to start to come up to temperature and to sweat out its juice.

If you were to measure this I'd say you have close to a half cup of apple grated just in case you're a person who likes to measure instead of saying half an apple.

So let's give it a stir.

We want this over a medium high to high heat so it has a chance to really cook quickly.

Okay, that apple is starting to cook.

We don't want crunchy apple in a sauce.

We love it when it's in other things but we don't want crunchy apple in a sauce.

You want it to really start to feel like it's almost disintegrating, but at the same time you want that little bit of peel and just a hint of apple goodness in there so that you can tell that there's apple in the sauce other than just the flavor.

So just a little texture, but not too much.

Okay, now I'm going to let that sit there for just a minute so things can really start to almost brown, but not quite.

I don't wanna go for brown on that garlic but I want to go for a slight turn to golden.

Okay.

And the apple is starting to get softer.

I feel that I can cut right through the apple.

That's what I want.

Yep.

And I see some golden starting on my garlic.

That's perfect.

Now at this point I want to add some rice wine vinegar and some soy sauce.

The rice wine vinegar is also going to give this a little tartness and the soy sauce adds that umami and that salt.

Anytime you're cooking and you can get all five of your flavors in, salt, sweet, bitter, sour, umami that will be a really nice tight recipe.

Okay, now let's add that soy.

Mmm, it smells so good.

Oh, I love this.

Now the apple is starting to actually steam.

It's steaming from the rice wine vinegar and it's steaming from the soy sauce.

So even though it was sauteing a little bit now it has the chance to actually steam and get that real cooking going.

All right, now let's add a little chicken stock, half cup.

Boy, that looks good.

And I wanna add some water, but as I add water I want to put in a little corn starch.

So I'm going to take about half cup of water and about two teaspoons of corn starch and put it into my mixture.

And I'm keeping a little extra corn starch just in case it's not thick enough.

Always make sure that you stir your corn starch through your water and keep stirring as you add it because corn starch separates so quickly.

There we go.

Mmm.

It smells divine.

Now I want to add about a half a cup of honey.

So I'm going to take this hot honey and just pour in about a half cup.

You don't want this to be too sweet but you also want enough sweetness that it really gives that body and that feel with the sauce because too little honey will make the sauce almost runny and it doesn't have a good feel to it or a good flavor to it.

Now let's just stir that around.

Oh, so as the heat gets to it and it starts to melt it produces this beautiful golden sauce.

And you can see that it's thickening just like a gravy.

If it gets too thick, you can add a little more water.

All right, now I'm just going to let that sit on simmer while I slice up my pork.

And then we'll pour that mead.

So look at that gorgeous pork roast.

And then we have this lovely honey, apple, garlicy sauce that just goes so well.

Just right down the center.

And let's give it a taste with this mead.

All right.

Ah, it's so tender.

It's just beautiful.

Mmm.

Really good.

And this mead with black currant.

Oh, it smells so good.

That pairs up so beautifully.

(upbeat jazz music) I'm here at Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg with Glenn Lavender.

Glenn, thanks for having us.

>>Of course.

Thanks for coming.

>>Absolutely.

I am so excited to hear about meads because people don't understand that mead is really a wine.

>>Yeah.

Honestly, when we opened our place I didn't realize we were opening an educational facility.

That is kind of what this has turned into it feels like.

>>Yeah.

>>Because most people come in never having had mead before, not understanding it.

And it's funny how many people come in and say I don't even know what this is.

>>Yeah.

>>It's like, but you still came.

That's great.

Yeah.

>>That's great.

That's great.

>>So mead add its simplest is honey water and yeast.

So I like to use this generally to help just for visualization.

>>Yeah.

>>So this is a one gallon jug that you might buy cider in right?

>>Sure.

>>And it takes, it's about 25% honey, 75% water.

And you blend those together.

You add yeast to it.

I'm giving you the simple version, of course.

>>Sure.

>>But that's kind of essentially it.

The yeast consumes the sugar like it does with grapes.

Like it does with beer.

As it consumes sugar, it creates alcohol and carbon dioxide.

>>Right.

>>We let all the carbon dioxide off gas, like wines do and then we're left with this ratio I just gave you will give you about 12%, 13% alcohol.

And no sweetness actually at that point.

>>Wow!

You're kidding?

>>Right So we control that, right.

>>Right.

Sure.

Just like winemakers control how much sweetness they have.

>>Sure.

But we found, we make honey wine, and if people come in and it's not sweet, they're really confused, so.

>>Oh yeah.

We do tend to make sure we've got some good level of sweetness in our mead's.

>>Well, I'd love to taste some of these mead's.

>>Great.

I wanna start you with our traditional mead which is again, honey water yeast.

We named this one Virginia Tonight.

>>I love it.

And like all of our mead's, this is tied to a song.

>>Yes.

>>So there's an old song by actually on a Foo Fighters album but Nora Jones is singing with Dave Grohl.

It's like a jazz song on a Foo Fighters album.

>>I love it.

>>So anyway, we named this after that.

And this is just wildflower honey from Virginia.

I'll get you to swirl that.

>>Thank you.

And smell it.

And you're gonna get some really wonderful aromas that are coming from the barrel, coming from the honey.

>>Wow.

That has an amazing aroma.

>>Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

>>And it doesn't overpower the pallet with sugar which a lot of people probably would assume when they know it's honey wine.

>>Right.

So we have some fruit mead's here.

>>Yes.

>>And I can't wait.

>>We have a couple of them.

So, you know, with with what we do here, we want to have ways for people that really understand the drink 'cause it's new to so many >>Yeah.

Yeah.

>>So this is, I've experienced black currant mead's fairly often.

>>Wow.

>>In the mead world.

>>Yeah.

>>And just looking at this color right away it takes the... >>Wow!

It takes our guests to wine 'cause it has some of that color.

>>Yeah.

>>We intentionally made this not as sweet.

It's got some tartness because it's black currant.

>>Right.

As well.

So, yeah.

This is a fruit mead which we call a melomel.

All fruit mead's are melomel's.

>>Melomel's >>Melomel.

Yeah.

>>Wow.

>>So you'd do the same thing you would with wine.

You get that aroma.

>>Wow.

That's like an, it's kind of like an intro red wine.

>>Yeah.

Yep.

>>Nice and light.

>>It's light.

>>But it has great flavor and body.

>>Yeah.

It's tart it.

It doesn't have the heavy tannins that you might find in a wine.

>>Yeah.

>>Which I like.

>>Right.

>>But this is, it's got its own thing.

It's a little different.

So the currant really does come through.

>>It's totally unexpected.

>>That's what we find.

Everybody who comes in is like, I didn't know I liked mead.

>>Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I knew I liked mead, but I didn't have any idea there were so many mead's.

>>It's just such a drink with so many possibilities.

>>So shall we try the strawberry?

>>Yeah, let's go to the next one.

Okay.

So I'll tell you a little story.

Virginia Tonight, I gave you a bit of the song connection.

>>Yeah.

>>Black Velvet is a song about Elvis Presley actually.

>>Oh yeah.

So Strawberry Swing, this is a song by Coldplay.

>>Yeah.

>>So we like to, I'm a musician, we like to have songs connected to all of our mead's.

>>I love that.

And so this one is strawberries and alfalfa honey.

Again, swirl it, get the aroma you'll get a ton of strawberry aroma here.

>>Got it right off the bat.

Wow.

It's like a young, fresh strawberry.

>>Yes.

>>Wild strawberries.

>>And I find it very fun when folks come in and say, "I only drink dry reds" and then they leave with six bottles of this.

>>Wow!

>>Because if you're thinking of this as wine.

>>Yeah.

That kind of, you've gotta de-categorize yourself, right?

>>Right.

Because it's technically a honey wine but it's not like fruit wines.

>>Right.

>>It is different.

Yeah.

>>This is amazing.

>>Thank you.

>>So how does a guy who's on the road all the time as a musician suddenly settle into Williamsburg, Virginia and make mead?

>>Well, so much time on the road.

>>Yeah.

I'm very, I'm efficient I guess.

I don't like to waste time.

And so I was reading books all the time sitting in airports, flying, driving on a bus, whatever.

And one of the authors that I read wrote a book called The Silver Hand.

>>Oh.

>>And in this book like many of his other books, they're historical fiction.

So you've got these characters who are drinking mead a lot.

And I didn't know what mead was.

>>Yeah.

In fact, back in my late twenties I hadn't had alcohol at all until then.

>>Yeah.

>>So, mead, beer, wine, it was all like a mystery to me.

So when I started exploring wine and beer mead was just another one in the category.

>>Yeah.

>>And when I finally found some, it wasn't in a store it was at a winery in Niagara Falls that was making it.

>>Wow.

>>He did a tasting with us and I was just like, this is really delicious.

Why is this not in the store?

So I think the idea was planted at that moment.

>>Yeah.

>>And it's been great.

>>Yeah.

We have, you'll see on many of our bottles almost all of them, it says "Savor What is Good."

>>Yeah.

>>So that's a bit of an ethos we stick to.

And when I write letters to our club members I'm always saying, what we're trying to do is create a drink that can help facilitate moments that you can savor what is good.

You don't know how much time you've got and you gotta share those moments together.

>>Absolutely.

>>Yeah.

Well, here's some more moments.

>>Yes.

Thank you.

(upbeat jazz music) >>I love a good steak sauce.

And this one is blueberry.

It's very unusual.

But as I was playing with fruit I'd made this with blackberries before and I thought, well, this particular mead is infused with blueberries.

Let's give blueberries a shot.

So in my cup, I have four cups of blueberries and I'm just gonna put those in my pan.

And I'm gonna add to that some rice wine vinegar about half cup.

And then I want to add some brown sugar.

This is a quarter cup of brown sugar.

A little bit of molasses.

Now I like molasses in my barbecues and steak sauces.

So it's really important to get that kind of sweetness that unctuous sweetness in this one.

This can be used as a steak sauce.

It can be used as a barbecue sauce.

It's great on chicken, I'll bet.

And on pork.

Then I'm gonna take a quarter cup of ketchup because you need that little bit of tomato to sort of round this out.

And I want to use some ginger root.

Now I've got some pureed ginger here, about a tablespoon.

You can use a freshly grated ginger or if you see the pureed ginger in your produce section that works great for this recipe.

Now in this bowl, I have a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of all spice.

I used about a half teaspoon of all spice and three quarters teaspoon of cinnamon to give that nice little hint of spice on the back end of the sauce.

And don't forget chili powder.

You have to have chili powder.

So a dark ancho chili powder, about a tablespoon.

Now let's turn that on and bring it up to temperature.

So what we're gonna do is let these berries just start to burst in that juice.

Now the great thing about sauces like this is that you can change up an ingredient and get an entirely different flavor.

So I used rice wine vinegar.

You can also use apple cider vinegar.

You could use white wine in this, and it works great.

So let's just bring that to a boil.

And what we're looking for is the berries to burst.

And then we're going to run it through the blender.

Now, blueberries are so high in antioxidants.

Anytime you can get them in your diet, try it.

Now the berries are starting to pop just a little bit.

It's gonna take about another minute.

And all of the berries will start to just open up.

Just pop right open.

So our berries have now all burst.

They look just great.

So they're nice and tender, just gorgeous.

Now what I wanna do now is pour this into a blender and we're just gonna blend it up until it's smooth.

But hold onto that pan because it's gonna go back in there to simmer down and thicken a little bit.

So remember, anytime you're putting hot liquids in a blender to blend you wanna make sure you take the little top out put a towel on, the steam builds up in that blender and it can pop the top off or blow this right out and burn you.

So be very, very careful when you do this.

And it's only gonna take a couple pulses.

(blender swirling) There we go.

See it popped right up onto the top, but it didn't get me.

Now let's put that back in the pan and simmer it for about 15 minutes.

All right, so we've got some steak.

It's perfectly done.

Let's get a little bit of our sauce.

This beautiful blueberry steak or barbecue sauce.

It's just so good with this.

This mead is infused with blueberries.

Just makes great sense.

So let's try a little bit of this mead and a little bit of the steak.

Oh, so good.

Mmm.

Oh yeah.

Mmm.

What a delicious pairing.

Great combination, and I hope you'll enjoy this one.

(soft jazz music) Many thanks to Glen Lavender at Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg for being my guest today.

I had so much fun pairing up mead's and food so this delicious pork loin with a honey, apple garlic sauce, and then this beautiful blueberry steak and barbecue sauce on steak.

And of course the caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream.

So I hope you've enjoyed these recipes.

For all of these and a whole lot more you can visit me at vpm.org/unwined.

And until next time, I'm Tassie Pippert saying go grab that glass.

It's always time to unwind.

>>Production funding for Un-Wine'd was made possible in part by.

>>The Virginia Wine Board, promoting the interests of vineyards and wineries in the commonwealth through research, education, and marketing.

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

Discover more virginiawine.org >>And by.

(upbeat jazz music)