(cheerful guitar music) >>Today on "Un-Wine'd," it's Southwest Mountains Vineyards.

Back in the kitchen, pasta Primavera with chicken and basil cream, salmon with creamy farro, and deep dish pizza.

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.

(upbeat music) >>And by: >>So today I'm going to make for you a creamy sauce with a little bit of vegetable and some chicken, so a pasta Primavera-style recipe.

We're gonna start off with a nice hot pan.

And to that, we're going to add one tablespoon of olive oil and about, oh, three to four tablespoons of butter.

Now I like to use butter in this, because it gives a nice creamy texture to the vegetables as they hit.

So we're gonna start off with about one large onion, and I wedge it instead of slicing.

I like this texture in pasta primavera.

It just makes a prettier finished dish.

And to that, two carrots that have been cut on the diagonal.

And I cut these on the diagonal, because they cook faster that way.

Now let's give that a stir before we add anything else.

We want to coat everything with that butter and oil.

Okay, now let's come in with some broccoli.

I have one large crown of broccoli, so the top of a broccoli plant, and I'm just using the florets.

Okay, now we're gonna stir fry this just a little bit until those carrots start to get tender.

It doesn't take very long.

With the pasta primavera, you really want the vegetables to be a nice, tender crisp.

You don't want the mushy in this.

Now let's take one red bell pepper that's been cut also in little strips.

Now the last thing we're going to add is two cloves of garlic.

And let's stir that up just really, really quickly.

Now I just want to move all these vegetables to a bowl to rest for a little while while we make our sauce.

So those vegetables will rest there a little bit.

And there is some residual cooking when you put it in the bowl.

All the heat from all the other vegetables will cook each of those vegetables a little longer.

Now let's put two tablespoons more of olive oil in our pan.

Make sure it comes up to heat.

Oh yeah, sizzling in there just a little bit.

I want this heat at about a medium high.

And now let's add three tablespoons of flour.

This will serve as our thickening agent.

And oh my goodness, it just works beautifully, and it gives a nice toasty flavor to this.

As you're cooking this, it's like a roux.

So the longer you cook it, the darker it gets.

I really am looking for just a nice little blonde roux.

I don't need a lot of flavor.

But if you want more flavor in your sauce, all you have to do is let that roux cook just a little bit longer.

And the longer it cooks, the more toasty and nutty it will become.

What I'm looking for is no residual flour that's uncooked in the pan.

And you can see it's starting to fond up just a little bit on the bottom in a couple of places.

Now the next thing we want to do is add a little bit of wine.

This is about a quarter cup of white wine, and it's just to de-glaze the pan so it gets very thick in there, as you can see.

And then let's take a cup of chicken stock.

Mm.

Now what we wanna do is just make sure that that flour mixture is all blended through our chicken stock so we don't have a lot of lumps.

We're going to bring this to a simmer.

And at this point, the butter and flour mixture will break up on its own, and start to make this a nice, thick sauce.

If you have a few little lumps, that's not a problem at this point, because we're also going to add some cream, and that cream will also help to break that up.

So let's add at this point one half cup cream.

And I'm using a heavy cream for this.

It gives a really nice mouth feel with this sauce.

Those little butter pods are still breaking up in there.

That's perfect.

I love the way that looks.

Alright, now at this stage, we're going to add some Parmesan cheese.

This is about a half cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Mm, love it.

Now let's just return our vegetables to the pan, and we're gonna simmer those for just a minute to make sure that our carrots have gone from the al dente they are now to a nice tender, crisp, just slightly different.

Hmm, gorgeous.

Now I want to turn this back to very low, because what I'm doing now is just bringing everything up to temperature and everything up to the doneness level that I want.

I'm also gonna put in some chicken.

So I have six breasts of chicken here.

They're about five ounces each that I just grilled with a little salt pepper and olive oil.

And I just grilled those to 165, and I wanna stir that in.

Now we're going to add half a pound of pasta that I've precooked and just drained really well.

Now if you want, you can save a little bit of that pasta liquid to put in your sauce in case it's too thick.

I like to have a little pasta liquid just in case.

Now let's stir it all together and we'll be ready to plate.

What a great weeknight one pot dish.

And with this chardonnay, it's just a spectacular meal.

(upbeat music) So Boela, thanks so much for having me here at Southwest Mountains Vineyard.

I am so excited to be here.

I love the surroundings, and I can't wait to hear about your story and what led you here.

So how did you end up in wine and in Virginia?

>>That's a long story.

How I got into wine, it was more by accident.

I went to university after school to study science.

I've always enjoyed science, so just enrolled first for just a general sort of a science degree, probably ending up sort of a science teacher at some point.

And then literally after a week or two, one of my friends in our dormitory said to me, "Hey, what are you gonna do with like a basic science degree, wanna study wine making?"

And I absolutely loved it.

From the first sort of venturing into the wine and the wine science part, I absolutely loved it, so yeah, so it was purely by chance.

And then I worked in and around Cape Town.

I've been very fortunate to do a few stints abroad.

I worked in France a few times, Italy, Spain, California.

It was just amazing to just explore the world and sort of learn more from the winemakers from different cultures.

So that was fascinating.

>>Wow, and here you have landed in the number one AVA in the world.

>>Indeed.

>>How exciting is that?

>>That is awesome.

(Tassie laughs) I must say it's quite interesting.

I think some of our friends back home were like, "You're going where?"

'Cause obviously, you know, (Tassie laughs) Virginia East Coast is still unknown outside, you know, I think it's the locals understand it, but outside from an international marketing point of view, it doesn't really get the recognition it deserves.

So it was quite nice to sort of, you know, shortly after I arrived here, you know, to get that news and say to the guys back home, "Hey, now you understand.

(Tassie laughs) Hopefully you get the picture now."

>>That's fantastic.

Are there any varietals here in the Virginia that you had not worked with before?

>>Yes, Petit Manseng, for instance.

>>Oh.

>>I think very few people in the world sort of, you know, grow Petit Man Sang.

>>Yeah.

>>It's Virginia, and I must say it is a tricky variety.

>>Yes.

>>Last year was a great dry vintage for us, but Petit Man Sang is saying the chemistry can be sort of out of whack (Tassie laughs) in a good season.

So that was something that we had to manage.

But I love the variety.

I think there's a lot of potential.

So yeah, so Petit Man Sang saying is definitely, definitely something out of my comfort zone.

Also, Gruner, I love the variety, but I've never made Gruner Veltliner before, the typical Austrian white variety.

I think it's a magic variety.

So we bottled our first attempt last year.

We bottled that a few months ago.

And really happy with what we got in bottles.

So yeah.

>>That is fantastic.

Well, I'm anxious to see how, with you as the winemaker, this amazing winery grows.

(upbeat music) I love a good salmon dish.

And this one is particularly close to my heart.

So we're going to start right here with two tablespoons of olive oil in our pan.

And then I have my classic mirepoix, a carrot, half an onion, and a couple ribs of celery, all minced really, really finely.

What we're going to do here is make a creamy farro to go with our salmon.

So while that sautes just a little bit, I'm going to get my salmon ready for my oven.

There we go.

I've got it on about medium high.

So while I'm doing that, I've got four little six ounce portions of salmon here.

And I want to just brush those with a little olive oil.

Just give 'em a nice coating.

And you can do this on the top and bottom, but it's not necessary.

You can just do the top if you'd like.

Sometimes I do both sides, but usually I just like one side coated, because I'm going to put a little salt and pepper, and some sesame seeds on this.

So let's sprinkle with just a little salt and pepper.

And this is a little sea salt and pepper that I keep ground up.

And then I'm going to pack it with some sesame seeds.

Now you can use white sesame seeds, you can use tuxedo, or even black would be fine.

I like the white because they're going to toast a bit.

And when they toast, then they turn this beautiful shade of brown.

Now we're going to pat that down, and pop this in a 425 degree oven for 16 minutes.

Now while that salmon is cooking, let's just get on with our farro.

What we're looking for is just the start of getting tender here.

So we want everything nice and translucent.

And then we're going to add a clove or two of garlic.

One if it's large, two if they're small.

Hmm.

Smells yummy.

And then I'm going to just kind of deglaze this with a little bit of white wine.

This is two-thirds cup white wine.

Hmm.

All right.

And then we want to add our farro.

So I'm going to add about a cup and a half of farro.

This is pearled farro.

And farro is a wheat product.

It looks like its own grain, but it's actually a grain of wheat.

There we go.

Now let's just stir that through.

I like to get that great wine flavor in it.

And I'm going to add some stock.

This will be a quart and a half of vegetable stock.

Now this farro can be made in two ways.

It can be made risotto style or it can be made rice style.

If we were making it risotto style, we'd add a little bit of the liquid, let it get almost dry, add a little more, and let it get almost dry.

And continue that process until all the liquid is cooked in, and the farro is nice and tender, but you actually don't have do that with this.

If you have a lot of steps in your recipe, you'll want to use rice style, then you're not tied to the stove quite so much.

So we're going to put a lid on this.

We're going to reduce the heat to about medium low and let it simmer for about 25 to 28 minutes.

Then turn off the cooktop, and let the residual moisture cook into the farro all by itself.

And then that farro will be creamy and ready.

So in my pan, I have one fennel bulb and about half a pound of thinly sliced Brussels sprouts.

I put a little olive oil on those and stuck them in the oven at about 425 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes or until they start to get a little color.

And then I just poured it, oil and all, right into my pan.

I used about two tablespoons of olive oil in total.

So what we're doing here is getting our next step ready in our recipe.

So one fennel bulb, the brussels sprouts, and then we're going to add two cups of grapes.

Just a nice red grape works really well.

So I'm looking for my grapes to just start to pop.

I want them to get nice and warm.

And as they do, that juice builds up on the outside, and then they burst.

Now our grapes are starting to get nice and warm.

And then I want to go back to my farro.

And at this point, the moisture is starting to simmer in.

And I want to add about a teaspoon of salt.

And I'm just gonna sprinkle it right across the top.

There's so much liquid.

As it starts to really boil, that salt will incorporate in.

It will bring itself up and down into the pan.

All right, our grapes are starting to pop.

You can see here that they're getting nice and warm.

They're starting to pop in the pan.

And then we want to add just a couple more flavor components to this.

First of all, six scallions, just cut in thin slices.

Mm, and now we're going to add two tablespoons of honey, just to give this some depth of flavor.

Now this particular dish works really well with a nice, full body Gruner Veltliner.

It also works really well with a Chardonnay.

Works great with a Merlot, and it's really good with Chianti.

Oh, this looks so great.

Now I just want to let that stay on warm until we're ready to plate.

Now let's plate this beautiful dish.

I have the farro on the plate, I have my salmon, and I just wanna top it off with some of this great fennel, onion, Brussels sprouts mixture.

Just like that.

Let's take some lovely pistachio nuts and sprinkle over the top.

You've got crunch, you've got sweet, you've got savory.

And with this Gruner Veltliner, mmm, my mouth is watering right now.

I love this dish, and I hope you'll give it a try the next time you have a glass of Gruner Veltliner.

(upbeat music) So Boela, this Gruner Veltliner, this is not well known throughout the state of Virginia.

Tell me a little bit about this varietal.

>>So Gruner is, it's probably the biggest variety in Austria.

>>Yes.

>>And a few guys doing it in Virginia.

So really aromatic varieties.

But Gruner, I've, I've always been interested in Gruner.

I've been to Austria a few times.

I've tasted some spectacular Gruners there.

And I know that Janis Robertson also really enjoys Gruner.

So it really is a magic variety.

We have a very small, small project of Gruner, and you know, the plan is to increase it.

So it is something, I suppose like most other things in Virginia, you need to spend your time in the vineyard to manage it.

(Tassie laughs) But just to work with something that really, that has that aromatics really sort of elegant on the palate.

Beautiful acid balance, but fruit weight, and it's just this everything in a glass.

So yeah, I'm really excited to work with this variety for the first time.

>>Yes, it's beautiful.

I'm getting a lot of lemon in that palette.

Oh, it's just spectacular.

So let's try a little bit of this Cabernet Franc.

And this is one of my favorite varietals.

I love a good Cab Franc.

>>Cab Franc's fantastic.

Cab Franc's the Garfunkel of the people.

(Tassie laughs) Everybody knows Simon, but Garfunkel is also very important part.

So this is Cab Franc, you know, and it's always been a big part for me in making sort of top end Meritage border style blends.

Always use a large chunk of Cab Franc.

I think it's an amazing variety, and it really seems to find a home in Virginia as well.

I think the winemaker, the jury is still out whether it is Petit Man Sang or Brunner, what the favorite white variety is, but red wines, I think most local wine makers will agree that Cab Franc's king in Virginia.

>>Oh yes.

>>So we found, yeah, interesting again that we've seen that there are very distinct styles.

We found, especially here, there's Keswick, sort of parts of Virginia, we often get a bit bigger, sort of more broad shoulder, darker fruit spectrum.

So there's a slightly bigger style.

If you go over that side of Charlottesville towards, even if you go over into the Shenandoah, we get the, the lighter, more brighter side.

So it is a bit of a chameleon that really shows the environment, you know, that where it grows, which I really appreciate of the variety.

>>Oh yeah, and the thing about the Cab Francs here in the Keswick area, you don't get a lot of that green pepper, that capsaicin.

You get a really nice berry, lots of raspberry and dark berry.

It's beautiful.

>>Now again it is, you gotta be careful, 'cause Cab Franc can get that capsicum sort of green.

You gotta be careful.

But we have found, again, back into the vignette, you just need to open your canopies and get enough sunlight in there and wind moving.

But yeah, more sunlight to get full ripeness.

So that is, we spend a lot of time sort of, you know, making sure that your canopies are open and geared for the style of wine that you're trying to achieve.

>>All right, well, thank you so much, Boela, and- >>Thanks for joining us.

It was a good time.

>>You bet.

To you and lots of years here at Southwest Mountains Vineyard.

(upbeat music) Pizza is one of those comfort foods for me.

I absolutely love it.

And I particularly love a deep dish pizza that I can have just a little wedge with a salad and a glass of wine.

It just makes my day.

So make a super easy deep dish pizza in my pan.

I have one pizza crust, so I'll give you a recipe for the pizza crust online, but you can use any pizza crust you'd like.

So we're going to just start off with some cheese.

This will kind of seal your pizza to keep all the moisture from going down into the bottom and seeping through that crust.

Now we are going to layer in all sorts of flavor, every which way we can.

I have bacon here.

So we're going to start off with a little layer of bacon.

And I have this just to a tender crisp, not quite crispy crispy.

And then how about some ham?

Just some chopped.

I've got chopped smoked ham here.

You could use any ham you want.

Actually, you can use any ingredients you want in this pizza.

But today we're gonna make it with lots of meat and vegetables.

Now let's lay in a little bit of pepperoni.

Just plain pepperoni, whatever you get from the store.

And that will give a lot of saltiness to this.

You know, pizza is a salty product, and it's so good with a nice glass of wine.

Now let's layer in some more meat, maybe some Italian pepperonis, Italian sausages.

Just kind of pitch them in there.

This is a dry salami that I'm using right now.

And then I also have a salami that has a little bit of pepper on the edge.

So it will give that little extra peppery flavor.

Just throw it all in.

Just make sure that you spread it out.

So your flavors are all through your pizza.

You don't want everything to be in one spot, and then go digging for it.

Now let's add some onions.

And I put in some mushrooms because I love mushrooms.

And when I do a deep dish pizza, if you don't cook the mushrooms, use canned mushrooms, because mushrooms have so much water in them that they'll really just drench your pizza.

So onions.

We have some zucchini.

And before I put in all of my vegetables, I wanna go ahead and put in another little layer of cheese.

This kind of acts like glue.

So it will go down through all of these great flavors, pull them together, and kind of glue up that pizza.

Now let's finish with the rest of our vegetables.

So we have some peppers here.

Hmm, this is going to be great.

Okay, now we have pretty much everything.

Let's finish with a little sauce and then we're gonna top it with some cheese.

So in my cup I about two cups of sauce, and I'll make sure that I share a couple of sauce recipes with you, one for fresh tomatoes and one for canned tomatoes.

And we just wanna pour that sauce over top.

The sauce is going to go down through all of the cheese and the vegetables and all of the meat.

And it works best like this, rather than trying to put the sauce in the bottom of the pan.

Why?

It's wet, right?

So we wanna make sure that our wet ingredients, our wettest ingredients, the vegetables, the sauce, they're all on the top.

Now let's finish with that last bit of cheese.

I'm using about a pound altogether of mozzarella.

This is quite a heavy pizza, but wow, is it great.

Let's just spin that around a little bit.

Get that mozzarella all in there.

So we're going to pop this in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Then let it sit for 30 minutes before you try to cut it, so that all of the liquid from inside the pizza goes back into flavor all of the ingredients together.

And I'll be back with a piece of pizza.

So look at that pizza.

It is going to be fantastic with this glass of Cabernet Franc.

So the next time you want to make a deep dish pizza, grab a glass of Cabernet Franc and enjoy.

(upbeat music) Many thanks to Boela and all of the staff at Southwest Mountains Vineyards for welcoming me into the tasting room and for letting me have such a great day.

I hope you enjoyed the foods that I paired with their wines today on the show.

For these recipes 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 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.

(upbeat jazz music) >>And by: (gentle music)