>>In the foothills of Afton Mountain sits a lovely little building that holds a winery.

And around it, a beautiful vineyard.

Today on "Un-wine'd," I'll pair up Cardinal Point wines with some great food.

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 (gentle bright music) >>And by: >>There's nothing like a Thai chicken wing.

It's so good.

And this particular blend of wine goes so well with it because it borders on sweet.

And when you have a hot, spicy chicken wing, you want something to just cut through that heat.

So, we've got this four-wine blend.

This has riesling, Gewurztraminer, Traminette, which gives that sweetness, and then a little Viognier.

So let's make a little sauce and bake these wings.

We're gonna start off with about a quarter cup of soy sauce.

And to that, I want to add a quarter cup of a sweet Thai chili sauce.

And three tablespoons of peanut butter.

Now, you want a creamy peanut butter for this.

And it can be natural or it can just be a regular store brand.

Anything works great, but you do want a creamy peanut butter.

Let's start mixing that just a little bit because we want to get that peanut butter to start blending in with that soy.

It tends to cut down the peanut butter better than anything else.

Now it's starting to strand around.

And I want to add to that two to three tablespoons of red Thai chili paste.

All right.

Oh, it looks great, and it smells so good.

I love those Thai smells and flavors.

Now I'm going to take about a tablespoon of olive oil.

I want the oil to give the wings a little bit of a glisten and to protect the moisture within the meat.

And if it's too thick, add just a touch of hot water.

Hot water works best, and I'm gonna start with about a tablespoon.

And now it looks perfect.

If the sauce seizes up, that's when you know it's too thick.

And the sauce can seize up more or less, depending on how much oil is in your peanut butter.

Now let's get those wings dipped and in the oven.

If you're using full wings, it will take a little longer to bake these.

And I like to cut my wings so that I have the little pieces, the drumettes and the sides.

Now want to just roll these chicken wings or chicken wing pieces in my sauce all the way around.

And then when I'm finished, I'm putting them in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

If you do the whole wing, it will take 40 to 45 minutes.

And then we'll be back with a tasty wing to enjoy with this wine.

I love these wings.

Everybody in my family loves these wings.

But we particularly love them with a wine or a beer that has just a sweet tint to it.

So if you love wings, I hope you'll enjoy this recipe and a great glass of wine.

(bright music) So, Tim, thanks so much for having us here at Cardinal Point.

This is an incredibly beautiful property.

Tell us a little bit about your winery.

>>We started out as grape growers.

My dad was in the Army, always wanted to have a farm.

I lived all over the place as a kid, including France and Germany.

And I was in Germany and high school.

Came back, lived in Northern Virginia.

My brother and sister, who are older than me, went to UVA.

I went to JMU, my dad retired, looked for some land, bought this place.

>>Yeah.

>>And I helped him plant our riesling, our first lines that went in in 1986.

So, yeah, it was a while ago now, right?

>>Yeah.

>>That's tough business, just growing grapes.

So in 2002, my sister, who's an attorney in Charlottesville, and I decided, "Hey, let's actually build a winery."

And with huge help from my parents, we're able to put up this building.

We are the 40th winery in the state.

What are we at?

Like, 300 and something?

>>300, yeah.

>>So back then you only had so many customers that you could sell grapes to.

So this way, with a winery, at least in my mind, I was like, "I can take this perishable product, turn it into a very stable product, add value to it too."

And that wasn't the only basis for it, but that was, you know, that's part of the thinking.

>>Well, and I know it takes great grapes to make really great wine.

And all those people who bought from you knew that you had great grapes.

>>Well, yeah.

It was... Yeah, we sold to like close by.

And actually I was trucking 'em down to Williamsburg too, so it was all over the place in the state.

>>Yeah.

>>But all in Virginia.

>>Yeah.

>>So it was good.

>>So tell me a little bit about some of the varietals you plant.

>>So Riesling was the first variety to go in.

I am not recommending Riesling for anybody in Virginia.

It's a tough grape to grow.

>>Yeah.

>>But then we also have, we have Chardonnay and Petit Manseng.

I love Petit Manseng, grape for Virginia.

In the reds, Cab Franc, Petit Verdot, Tannat.

I'm now in a flux, we had grown out to just 15 acres.

But like I said, I've been doing this for so long.

I have 30-year-old Chardonnay that I've now pulled out, and I'm replanting some to Chardonnay.

And then I'm looking at other varieties.

(gentle bright music) >>Every family has a Monday meatloaf recipe.

It's a classic American dish.

And we are going to make a meatloaf today that borders on that classic American with all of the stuff in it, but we're gonna change it up just slightly so that it has a little bit higher profile on flavor.

So let's try this.

We've got about two and a half to three pounds of ground beef in our bowl.

And I'm using a beef that's 85% meat and 15% fat.

That's classic for meatloaf.

If you go to a really dry beef that's more 93% meat and 7% fat, sometimes you don't have quite enough fat in there to give you really good flavor.

So, here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna start with a little Parmesan cheese.

And I love cheese in my meatloaf.

You can use American cheese if you'd like, but Parmesan is my go-to.

It's a little drier so it doesn't string when I cut it.

Then I want to take a quarter of a red pepper and a quarter of a green pepper.

Now, in my household, my husband does not like peppers in his meatloaf.

So when I make meatloaf just for us, I leave those peppers out.

You can use whatever you'd like.

I love jalapenos in my meatloaf, frankly.

And that's what I would do.

Then I'm going to go with about a quarter cup of either a tomato sauce or a ketchup.

If you want a little sweeter meatloaf, go with the ketchup.

If you don't want it as sweet, go with the sauce or even a paste will do.

Now, remember those onions that are the classic French fried onions that you get on every single green bean casserole you've ever had at every family event or church supper.

Well, we're gonna take six ounces of those, and I just ground them up in a food processor, and I'm going to add that instead of my onions and instead of my breadcrumbs.

That's just another attempt to lift that flavor profile just a wee bit.

Now I'm taking a clove of garlic.

I love garlic and I like to put it in all of my meats pretty much.

So at clove of garlic, you're not going to detect a lot of garlic in this, but it will give you just a little hint of an upper flavor profile.

If you like more garlic, by all means, use garlic.

Now let's take some eggs, three eggs.

These are large eggs, and I like to use three of them.

I always have an extra one on hand just in case one is bad.

You rarely get a bad egg these days, but once in a while, it actually happens.

There we go.

And now I want to add a tablespoon of dried parsley, a tablespoon of dried basil 'cause I love basil, and a teaspoon of oregano.

I'm not as crazy about oregano as I am about basil.

There's just something about oregano that's not my favorite.

But you might love a tablespoon of oregano and a teaspoon of basil, or leave one or the other out.

Now let's put on some gloves because I don't like to get really super dirty in the kitchen.

And I'm going to just knead this a little bit, mixing it up.

But you don't want to overmix meatloaf either.

The thing with meatloaf is that when you start to heat up the fats with your hands, you're really starting to make the meatloaf tough.

You're taking all the fat out of that meatloaf blend and you're putting it into your own skin.

So that's another reason why I like to use these gloves.

I know that the fat in my meatloaf is staying the fat in my meatloaf.

So first, I kind of give it a little knob turn.

It starts to get it mixed up.

There we go.

Now, meatloaf used to be just the standard in my house.

We had it at least once a week back in the '70s and '60s when ground beef, frankly, was the cheapest thing you could buy.

Well, now beef is expensive.

You wanna make sure that it goes the length that it needs to go to feed your family.

And meatloaf is a really great way to put that beef and all that protein from the beef into your meal.

Now we are pretty much mixed up.

Oh, it looks great.

This is the meatloaf from my childhood with all those peppers in it.

So, I want to take a meatloaf pan.

And I like using a meatloaf pan because it has an insert in it where you can just pick that meatloaf up.

It allows the juices that are more fat to drain off from the meatloaf and settle in the bottom of the pan, and then you can pick the meatloaf up.

It doesn't stick to the pan, it's great.

So let's put that meatloaf mixture right in our pan.

And we wanna pat it, but don't pat it too hard because those holes in the bottom of the grid will certainly fill up, and then your meatloaf will stick to that.

All right, now I'm going to bake this at 350 degrees for an hour, and then I want to either take it out and slice it.

You wanna let it rest about 15 minutes.

Or you can put a little ketchup sauce or barbecue sauce on the top, pop it back in your 350 oven for about 15 minutes and let it toast.

If you take the meatloaf out, write at about 155 degrees and top it, then in that 15 minutes that it bakes, you'll reach that desired temperature of 165.

So let's see what it looks like all finished.

So I let this rest for 15 minutes before I started to slice it.

Like any really good meatloaf, little bits and pieces start coming off the sides and those little crispies start to fall off.

But oh my goodness, that's the way you wanna meat loaf, and it just takes me back to my childhood.

Now, I'm pairing this with a cabernet franc.

Cabernet franc is a lighter grape than a Cabernet Sauvignon.

It has flavors of raspberry and tobacco, cassis, some green pepper, and it's just amazing with meatloaf.

This tannic acid is just light enough with the protein in the meat that it binds together and it gives you a great palate feel.

So I hope you'll enjoy this meatloaf and a little glass of Cabernet Franc.

(bright music) >>Well, Tim, I'm excited to taste this particular white wine.

Tell me a little bit about it.

>>Okay, this is a wine we call hopped Chardonnay.

And it is a Chardonnay that's been hopped, and it's been...

It's a Chardonnay that I dry hop with a hop called Nelson Sauvin from New Zealand.

>>Yeah.

>>It's simply a all stainless steel fermented, no malolactic conversion.

So, it's basically a raw Chardonnay wine.

>>Wow.

>>Then I drop hops into the top.

I won't say how much or, because, you know, people are so...

I'm just kidding.

(Tassie laughs) Nobody really cares.

But it's, you know, maybe a week time or so, and then it's racked off of those hops, but you get this flavor and aromatic expression.

>>It's floral, yet it's hoppy, yet it also exudes all those Chardonnay qualities that you know for Chardonnay, particularly stainless steel Chardonnay.

>>Sure, sure.

>>Wow.

>>Yeah.

>>Yeah, so let's taste that.

Wow.

>>Yeah, through the process of, you know...

I didn't learn this from somebody.

I came up with this by talking with the brewers down the road.

(Tassie laughs) And they just told me, you know, hops have all these different characteristics, so I tried a whole lot of different ones.

And many are for, and brewers know this, but for bittering and things like that.

>>Right.

>>I tried that, and that really changes like the mouth feel.

This is more just aromatics, and that was a matter of just trial and error.

>>Well, and we've got Cab Franc here, which is one of my favorite red varietals.

>>Yeah, it is.

Mine as well, especially here in Virginia.

>>Oh, yeah.

>>This is actually fruit from a friend of mine, Bill Pelton at Clay Hill Vineyard, which is a little closer to Charlottesville.

I've been buying this block of fruit for, I don't know, a hundred year, no.

20, I don't know, a long time.

15 years.

>>Right.

>>And I always keep it, it's a vineyard designated bottling, so it's Clay Hill cab franc.

>>Yes.

>>And I just think it's a great example of Virginia Franc terroir-driven- >>Yes.

>>But it's got the fruit and a little sweetness, but that cedar shaving and everything, you know.

It's solid and I like the mouth feel on it.

>>It's really nice with the cedar shaving, I get a lot of cherry, I get those classic Cab Franc flavors, and the aromas, and it's so smooth.

>>Right.

>>Really well balanced.

>>Yeah, it doesn't blow, you know, it's not... Alcohol's not crazy like, or hot or anything.

>>Right.

>>But, yeah, I'm thrilled with this.

>>Yeah.

>>The wine from there.

>>Well, Tim, thank you so much for sharing part of your day with me.

>>Hey.

>>Good luck with all of that chemistry you do.

>>Oh, thanks very much.

My pleasure.

Thanks for coming.

>>Absolutely.

(bright music) I have a hopped Chardonnay here.

So the flavors to me just called out for Reuben sandwich.

And I thought, "What fun way to present a Reuben sandwich a Reuben pizza?"

So I've got a dough here that I made with half white flour, all-purpose flour, and half rye flour.

Same pizza that I always make, but this time I just added that rye flour.

And the recipe will be on the website.

Now, we just wanna take a little flower to sprinkle just to make sure that we roll it out and it doesn't stick to our board or to our pin.

So let's give a nice little gentle roll.

And I'm going for old 14 or so inches here.

I want this dough to not be super thin, but I also don't want it to be too thick.

So as I made this pizza dough, I used one packet of rapid yeast for two pizza doughs.

If I wanted a thinner crust, I'd use about half a packet.

There we go.

Now let's get that over onto our pizza pan.

Here we go.

Just lift.

Make sure you don't stick.

Now, I've sprayed this pizza pan lightly with a non-stick coating, so it shouldn't stick terribly at least.

And I chose a pan that has the little holes in the bottom.

So if I've got a thick crust, I'm just gonna roll it over a bit.

Now, let's make some pizza sauce, but not just regular pizza sauce.

It's going to be Russian dressing just like you'd get on a Rueben.

So we're going to start with three quarters of a cup of mayo and about two tablespoons of sour cream.

Two to three tablespoons of ketchup, and that's what gives it that color and the sweetness.

The other thing that gives it sweet, sweet dill relish, about two tablespoons.

A teaspoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon of Worcestershire, and about a tablespoon and a half of onion.

Now let's just stir that up.

Now let's get that crust back over here and we'll assemble.

All right, let's start with some Russian dressing.

We're going to just layer this all over the pizza.

And I've made enough dressing to do two pizzas, unless you have somebody in your house who just loves Russian dressing.

And then you can make it a little extra thick.

Spread it evenly.

Now, anytime you work with pizza, you want to do this really fast.

And the reason is, as you put the sauce on, regardless of what kind of sauce that is, it makes the dough start to soften.

So if the dough softens, it can stick really badly or it can even disintegrate before you ever get it into the oven.

Now, let's top that with our wonderful Rueben ingredients.

First of all, some cheese, Swiss cheese.

So I'm just using some sliced Swiss, and I'll move it all around to make sure that I cover relatively all of this crust.

And of course, sauerkraut.

And I see I have a little more cheese.

I'm going to fill in those holes that I see around.

And I like to do that sometimes after I start the sauerkraut so that I can also see where the holes are there, and then I just kind of tuck and fill.

All right, a little more sauerkraut.

You want to make sure that that sauerkraut is squeezed really, really dry.

And I like to use a cold pack sauerkraut, something that you'd get in the deli case, because it's a little less vinegary and I think it just blends a little bit better with the flavors.

All right, let's get all of that.

Have a jumper there.

And then, of course, corned beef.

I've just chopped up this corned beef, and this is about a quarter pound of corned beef, and we'll just scatter that all over the pizza.

Now, my oven is preheated to 475 degrees, and I'm going to be ready to just pop this in.

Make sure if you have a lot of these little slices together, you want to separate those so you don't end up with a cube of corned beef, but you end up with a good smattering of corned beef.

All right, now let's pop that in the oven, 475 for about 15 minutes, and it'll be ready.

So here's that beautiful Reuben pizza to go with this hopped chardonnay.

So it cuts beautifully, it's so delicious, and I absolutely can't wait to try it because I do love a good Reuben.

Oh, and I can hear the crispiness of the crust.

That's great.

(gentle lively music) Awesome.

Who wouldn't love a piece of this pizza?

Oh my gosh, it looks amazing.

Steam still rolling.

And with a glass of Chardonnay, particularly hopped Chardonnay.

What a meal.

Well, Tim, thanks so much for a great day at Cardinal Point.

It was loads of fun to pair up your wines with these foods, including this meatloaf, this wonderful Rueben pizza, and, of course, the Thai chili chicken wings.

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 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 at virginiawine.org (gentle bright music) >>And by: