(tranquil ambient music) - I'm here today at Villa Appalachia in Floyd County to taste some wonderful Italian wines, including Primitivo, Aglianico, and delicious Pinot Grio.

So go grab your glass, it's time right now to unwind.

- [Narrator] Production funding for Un-wine'd was made possible in part by.

- [Male Narrator] 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.

(tranquil ambient music) - And by.

- I had the most wonderful time today with Tim and Julie Block at Villa Appalachia as we tasted some pizza from this beautiful pizza oven, we paired up some Aglianico.

We talked a little bit about this property and how they acquired it about three years ago, their interest in wine and food and in the community.

Back in the kitchen we'll be pairing up their wines with some delicious food, including brussel sprouts and bacon pizza, a meatball pizza, and some stuffed zucchini.

So right now, go grab that glass, we're gonna settle in to my kitchen.

Let's have some fun and let's unwind.

There's nothing quite like Italian varietals and wonderful Italian food to make my day.

Today, I'm going to pair up some delicious Italian varietals.

And the first thing we're going to make is a delicious pizza.

I'm gonna feature this with a little Pinot Grigio which is just a lovely light high acid wine, it's wonderful.

We're gonna make some pizza dough first.

So let's get started.

In my bowl, I have some flour, just some all-purpose flour.

And I'm gonna put in that a little bit of yeast and a little sugar.

Now, I like to use a rapid yeast so that it rises pretty quickly.

And then what I wanna do is just pour in about two cups of water and then let's get in it with our hands.

So what you wanna do is just start mixing all of that together, just pull it forward, mix it around, make sure that that sugar and yeast gets into all of your dough.

Now, the reason that I don't put the salt in or the oil at the beginning is because both salt and oil will impede the gluten process.

And I wanna make sure that I really get this started before I put any oil or salt into the mix.

Now let's go ahead and add that salt.

About a tablespoon, and then about a table spoon of olive oil.

And just again, press, get that olive oil in there, really get it going.

And as you do this, you're picking up all of those bits from the bottom of your bowl.

Now I've got it in a nice ball.

And what I wanna do now is just to take it out, put it on a little board and knead it for a while until that gluten is really, really starting to get going on this dough and everything is nice and smooth and elastic.

Now, I like to dust my surface with just a little bit of flour.

And keep a little flower at your side, just so that you can keep incorporating that in.

And I'm gonna show you how to knead this so that you're developing that gluten, you're gonna get a beautiful crust that's fluffy while at the same time, crisp on the bottom and it has great structure to hold your pizza together.

So what we wanna do is look at our dough like it's a clock, 12 o'clock six o'clock, three o'clock, nine o'clock.

So I wanna take 12 o'clock to six, and I wanna press out like this, really press hard with your hands.

Then I wanna take three o'clock to nine and turn it and do the same so that your nine o'clock becomes your six o'clock.

And we're going to keep doing this all over until our dough is smooth and elastic.

(tranquil ambient music) Okay, so look at that dough, beautifully smooth elastic.

Now let's just cut it into four pieces.

It'll make four beautiful pizzas.

So what I wanna do is take my dough and just make it into balls.

And I'm gonna take a little cookie sheet, and just plop those on the cookie sheet.

And then I'll grease the top of them just slightly.

I usually like to use a little olive oil in a spray bottle and put that right on the top, cover it with plastic wrap for about 45 minutes, and then these are ready to go.

Now let's make this filling and I love to do roasted brussel sprouts so that's where this inspiration came from.

So we're going to take a little bit of bacon and I just happen to have the kind of bacon that's already pre baked.

If you use fresh bacon, that's even better because you get more fat out of it, but I just wanna render what little bit of fat there is left out of this bacon.

And because I'm using pre-cooked bacon, I'm gonna add a little olive oil.

If you're using fresh bacon, don't do that.

So about a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half will do it for this.

So the reason that I cook all this in advance is because when you're cooking, particularly in an outdoor oven, the pizza cooks so fast that all of the ingredients will be raw if you don't cook them first.

So now I wanna add a little bit of onion, about a quarter cup.

And I wanna add my brussel sprouts.

I have eight brussel sprouts here, exactly, eight brussel sprouts.

So about six pieces of bacon, quarter cup of onions, eight brussel sprouts.

So what we're doing is just kind of emulating that roasting process here.

Ah, that looks delicious.

Now let's build that pizza.

Okay, so we have our beautiful dough, it's risen about 45 minutes and it just started to deflate a little bit as I put it on this board.

Now, what I wanna do is just dust my rolling pin so things don't stick.

And I dusted my surface again, and we just wanna roll that to about 11 or so inches.

Now instead of flour, I like to use corn meal on my board.

It gives a little more of that grit on the bottom and allows it to slide better, and lay it right out on our board.

There we go.

Make sure it slides.

Yeah, great sliding.

Now I wanna take a little bit of cheese and for this one, I like to use a little fresh cheese, so a fresh mozzarella but remember that mozzarella has a lot of water in it so you don't wanna overdo it on the mozzarella.

And then we're gonna take about half of this filling, this filling will make for two pizzas.

And let's just give it a sprinkle.

And I love this roasted brussel sprout flavor all on the pizza, it's just amazing.

Okay.

Just a touch more.

And then I'm gonna slide it right into my oven.

(tranquil ambient music) Again, make sure it slides a little bit.

If it doesn't, kind of lift those edge spots and put in some more or corn meal All right.

This is such a beautiful pizza.

And you can see that you got a nice brown crust, it's crispy on the bottom.

Oh, it's just gonna be delicious.

So let's give it a shot.

So I have this beautiful Pinot Grigio.

Now a lot of vegetables are really hard to pair with wine.

Brussel sprouts and Pinot Grigio are just amazing.

So let's give it a taste.

Hmm.

Wanna get one of those brussel sprouts.

Hmm.

So good.

Wow, what a pairing?

Hmm.

I love this flavor.

And if you're a vegetarian, this is gonna be a great one for you, just take out the bacon, just take out that bacon and use some delicious brussel sprouts and any kind of cheese that you like.

So let's head down to Villa Appalachia on the Blue Ridge Parkway where they grow amazing Italian varietals and meet up with friends there.

So talk to me a little bit about this amazing place.

You've not owned it long, but wow, you've really put your stamp on it.

So tell me a little bit about this Villa Appalachia.

- Sure.

So I had made the decision to retire a few years ago and looking for something to do, and we fell in love with this place.

First and foremost, it's the wine.

- Yeah.

- 30 years of what I consider to be higher end quality wine making by the previous owner.

But secondly, the thought of just living up here really appealed to us.

- Oh yeah,.

it's beautiful.

- [Tim] We're in the middle of our, actually towards the tail end of our fourth harvest already.

- Wow.

- [Tim] And having a blast and Julie is our wine maker.

(chuckles) - [Tassie] So did you ever anticipate that Julie being in the nursing industry?

- Never, no, we sort of just jumped into it and like he said, we're at the tail end of our fourth harvest.

However, we've really only been doing this three years.

So we jumped in right before harvest season.

So it was like, baptism by fire.

And well, yeah, we had great instructors.

- Good.

Well, and you've got chemistry kind of as a background being in nursing.

So did you feel natural doing that?

Was it something that was a steep learning curve?

- Yeah, oh yeah.

(laughing) No, I mean, there's nothing natural about fermenting food and then putting it in your body in my brain.

No, but it definitely came, we had really good resources and so it came as a natural progression.

- That's great.

Well, when you have amazing fruit it's easier to make amazing wine, right?

Yeah, because it's hard to make good wine out of bad fruit.

You've got amazing fruit.

Thank you.

- Yeah, yeah.

So how far down the mountain do you grow?

Because I know this is pretty high.

- Yeah, right.

The Italian varietals in particular don't tend to do well at this elevation.

I think they tried early on, but pretty quickly determined too much frost, too much rain up here.

We're at 3,400 feet.

Yeah.

The vineyard is a good 14, 1600 feet lower.

About 40 minutes by car down the valley.

- Yeah.

- And we bring all the grapes up here during harvest and the crush pad is right in back and we do all the crushing and pressing and the fermenting here.

- Yeah.

- Well, and you grow some different grapes from others throughout the state.

So we're tasting the Primitivo, you have the Aglianico and, oh my goodness,.

Pinot GRE, which is hard to grow in Virginia.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yes.

- So great wines, great wines.

Yeah.

- We've also got Montepulciano and Vermentino, some Malvasia promises.

So yeah, they did plant original Italian grapes and then grafted 'em onto the Virginia root stock and we are happy to have inherited this.

- Well, and you have a lot of really cool things here, like you've got your pizza oven, you have events on Sunday where you do pizzas.

How neat is that for this community?

I mean, my goodness.

- Yeah, I think it's, first of all, it's fun.

- Yeah.

- That's my background.

- Yeah.

- But you know, obviously the wines has to be at the forefront first and foremost.

We're gonna continue to make the best wine we can.

- To your family, to your future, thank you.

and salute.

- Salute.

- Thank you.

- I love the red varietals in the Italian portfolio and I'm gonna make a meatball pizza, a meatball pizza.

I just love meatball pizza.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is just chop up some herbs and I've got a lot chopped already but I have some wonderful fresh oregano here that I'm just gonna chop up.

And I need that for my sauce as well as for my meatballs.

So I'm gonna chop up maybe about two tablespoons all together.

Just pull those leaves right off of the stem.

Make sure you don't chop the stems in this because oregano stems are pretty hard.

We have a nice mince on that.

Now what I wanna do is just to make a quick and easy sauce and I have a 28 ounce can of tomato puree.

This will make a nice thick sauce which is what you really want to stand up to those meatballs.

So I'm gonna take about half of mine, my oregano that's about a tablespoon.

And I like to use all fresh herbs in this because it really just kind of makes it stand out a little bit.

Now, if you are using a recipe that calls for one tablespoon of fresh herbs and you don't have it, use one teaspoon of dried instead.

So I have some basal here.

Hmm, and I'm gonna put in about a tablespoon of basal, about a tablespoon of freshly minced parsley.

Oh, it smells so good already.

And then I wanna take about a clove of garlic minced.

Now, depending on your tomato puree, you may need a little bit of salt.

I'm not adding salt to this one because it's pretty salty, but make sure that you taste it before you use it.

And that way you'll know if you need to add that salt.

So just stir it around, give it a really good mix.

And we're gonna set that aside and make some meatballs.

So in my bowl, I have one pound of a meatball mix or a meat loaf mix.

This is one third beef, one third pork, and one third veal.

And then I'm gonna add to that just a little bit of Parmesan cheese, about a quarter cup and about a half cup of Panko bread crumbs.

And then you wanna take those same herbs, so about a tablespoon of parsley, a tablespoon of basal.

And you want a little bit of your oregano.

So let's just put that in.

And then I'm gonna add to that my garlic, and for this two clothes of garlic in the meatballs.

Now I just wanna get an egg ready and to do that, always break it in a separate bowl because then you know if the egg is good if you put in a bad egg into all that meat and that mixture, you just have a bad batch.

So make sure you always break your egg separately.

And I like to just kind of break up my egg yolk, I'm not whipping it, but I'm breaking it up so that it's not concentrated in one spot.

And then let's just start mixing.

Okay, so I've got that made and now we just wanna cook those meatballs.

You can do those in the oven or on the cooktop and I'm gonna make small meatballs to go in my oven.

Let's get the a pan nice and hot.

I'm gonna put just a little bit of olive oil in it because that keeps the meatballs nice and moist and it gives consistency to the frying.

And I'll actually be cutting these in half before I put them on the pizza.

Now, these also make a great meatball sub, you can make 'em much bigger, you can make 'em for spaghetti, this is a great recipe.

Now like with any meat, you wanna get a nice sear on it but you wanna reduce that temperature because if you cook it too hard, too fast, it just gets dry.

So what I wanna do here is take some of my sauce and I wanna put it on my meatballs but I'm gonna cut these meatballs in half first.

So let's just give 'em a little cut Because I don't want huge chunks on my pizza.

And I wanna scatter out that deliciousness all over.

So if you use six or seven small meatballs on a pizza like this, that's probably about enough, and then take a little bit of your sauce because this is the way we're gonna mix it to go on the pizza.

Now let's put those meatballs on and then if we need more sauce, we'll add it.

Now some of that delicious fresh mozzarella, let's dot it all over.

If you're using a graded cheese, usually you put that graded cheese down first, then put the meatballs on top.

But when you're using fresh, you wanna make sure that you're filling the holes and you're not incorporating a lot of moisture under your ingredients.

Oh, this is gonna be absolutely delicious.

And I love to either chop up my mozzarella if I'm using fresh, grate it or I'll use some little pearl mozzarellas.

Now I wanna just give this just a hint of olive oil on the top.

So I have some wonderful Sangiovese here.

This is the grape of Chianti and it is wonderful with this pizza.

It's light for a red.

Hmm.

Has amazing aromas and flavors.

Ah, perfect.

Now let's taste it with this pizza.

It's hot.

Hmm.

I feel the crunch in my teeth, it's wonderful.

Hmm, a little more of that wine.

Wow, absolutely amazing.

I hope you'll enjoy this one and I'll be right back with a stuffed zucchini that we're gonna make right here in the oven.

(upbeat ambient music) I love vegetarian dishes.

And one of my favorite vegetables to use to stuff is a zucchini.

So I'm gonna make a great stuffed zucchini today.

This is gonna be something that you can make in the oven and you can also make these the a day before and then just roast everything the day that you're going to serve.

So it makes a quick and easy meal when you get home after work.

So I have a grapefruit spoon here and I'm just going to cut the center out of this zucchini.

I just wanna make a nice boat of it.

Now you can use a lot of different squashes for this.

Actually, I have used a lot of different squashes particularly those wonderful summer squashes that are huge but almost melon like, and they work really, really well.

So let's just stick this in and let it get nice and hot, a little bit roasted, and then we'll stuff it.

So to get our zucchini ready to stuff, we need to make a little stuffing.

So I'm going to use another zucchini.

I'm gonna use a little bit of onion, some Parmesan cheese, a little bit of yellow squash, some red pepper.

And then we'll add some tomatoes, a little panko and some herbs as we go.

So what we wanna do is just make some nice cubes of our vegetables and I don't make this whole yellow squash or the whole zucchini, what I want to do is just make enough to fill however many zucchinis I'm stuffing.

And for that, I usually need about, oh and eighth of each of these vegetables, you don't wanna get too much because it just doesn't hold that much stuffing, but I'm gonna make enough to probably fill three or four with this batch.

And I have about a half of an onion here to use.

And then some red pepper.

Now I love peppers, you can use red, yellow, green.

Remember that if you use green, it's a little more pungent so you're not gonna get that sweetness that you would get with a red pepper.

So let's heat up a fry pan over medium, high to high heat.

I wanna cook this kind of quickly, almost like a stir fry.

Ooh, yeah, nice and hot.

And then a red pepper.

Now if you want, you can also use everything you scooped out of that zucchini boat and put it right in this mixture.

Okay, let's add a little bit of garlic because that's going to give that wonderful Italian flavor.

And of course, flavor, flavor, flavor is the name of the game.

You want to build your flavors as you go when you cook.

And then the last vegetable I want to throw in, it's a little bit of cherry tomato and I take about half a pint of cherry tomatoes and just cut those in two and stir them in.

And then let's throw in a couple more things.

So I've got some panko breadcrumbs here And I just want to coat all of these vegetables.

Don't put in so much that your filling is all red.

But you just wanna coat just like this.

Just a tiny bit more, but not all of them.

And then the last thing is our smoked mozzarella.

You can use regular mozzarella in this, you can use grated, you could use cheddar cheese if you wanted, you can use pretty much anything you'd like, but I really love the smokiness with this Primitivo wine.

Now Primitvio is just a beautiful red grape from Italy and it is in the family of Zinfandel.

So if you love, Zinfandel, give Primitivo a try, it's just a wonderful wine.

It's rich, has great berry flavor.

It's deep.

And with the smoke mozzarella, I think it all just pairs together so beautifully.

I'm just cutting this into some small cubes to put into my filling.

There you go.

And overfill it because it will collapse a little bit.

If you're missing cheese in a spot, just put it on.

Now, I'll slide this back into my oven here for about seven minutes.

If you're baking in a home oven, it's going to take about 15 minutes or so, make sure you bake until a nice golden brown on top.

That cheese is melted and ah, so good.

So beautifully dark, just a gorgeous wine, has that deep Garnet color.

Hmm, beautiful bouquet, it's just amazing.

And trust me, this smoked mozzarella, these amazing vegetables, (tranquil ambient music) it's a true winner and I hope you'll enjoy it.

So from Pinot Grigio to Sangiovese and the lovely Primitivo, I hope you've enjoyed all the wines and the foods we've paired today.

For these recipes and a whole lot more, go to bpm.org/unwind.

I want to thank all my guests today, Tim and Julie Block and Hayward Smith for all of the wonderful time they shared with me at Villa Appalachia.

So until next time, go grab that glass.

It's always time to unwind.

- [Narrator] Production funding for Un-wine'd was made possible in part by.

- [Male Narrator] 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 - [Narrator] And by.